The USPS as of February 2015 has 617,254 active employees and operated 211,264 vehicles in 2014. The USPS is the operator of the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world.[2] The USPS is legally obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. The USPS still has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail" and personal letterboxes in the United States, but now has to compete against private package delivery services, such as United Parcel Service and FedEx.[3]

Since the early 1980s, many of the direct tax subsidies to the Post Office (with the exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters) have been reduced or eliminated in favor of indirect subsidies, in addition to the advantages associated with a government-enforced monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail.[4] Since the 2006 all-time peak mail volume,[5] after which Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act[6] (which mandated $5.5 billion per year to be paid into an account to fully prefund employee retirement health benefits, a requirement exceeding that of other government and private organizations),[7] revenue dropped sharply due to recession-influenced[8] declining mail volume,[9] prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit.[10] The USPS lost $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2014 [11], $5.1 billion in 2015,[12] and $5.6 billion in 2016 and its revenue was $67.8 billion in 2014[11] and $68.9 billion in 2015.[12]

In the early years of the North American colonies, many attempts were made to initiate a postal service. These early attempts were of small scale and usually involved a colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony for example, setting up a location in Boston where one could post a letter back home to England. Other attempts focused on a dedicated postal service between two of the larger colonies, such as Massachusetts and Virginia, but the available services remained limited in scope and disjointed for many years. For example, informal independently-run postal routes operated in Boston as early as 1639, with a Boston to New York City service starting in 1672.

A central postal organization came to the colonies in 1691, when Thomas Neale received a 21-year grant from the British Crown for a North American Postal Service. On February 17, 1691, a grant of letters patent from the joint sovereigns, William III and Mary II, empowered him:

"to erect, settle, and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, and to receive, send, and deliver the same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, and to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years."[13]

The patent included the exclusive right to establish and collect a formal postal tax on official documents of all kinds. The tax was repealed a year later. Neale appointed Andrew Hamilton, Governor of New Jersey, as his deputy postmaster. The first postal service in America commenced in February 1692. Rates of postage were fixed and authorized, and measures were taken to establish a post office in each town in Virginia. Massachusetts and the other colonies soon passed postal laws, and a very imperfect post office system was established. Neale's patent expired in 1710, when Parliament extended the English postal system to the colonies. The chief office was established in New York City, where letters were conveyed by regular packets across the Atlantic.

Before the Revolution, there was only a trickle of business or governmental correspondence between the colonies. Most of the mail went back and forth to counting houses and government offices in London. The revolution made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the information hub of the new nation. News, new laws, political intelligence, and military orders circulated with a new urgency, and a postal system was necessary. Journalists took the lead, securing post office legislation that allowed them to reach their subscribers at very low cost, and to exchange news from newspapers between the thirteen states. Overthrowing the London-oriented imperial postal service in 1774–1775, printers enlisted merchants and the new political leadership, and created a new postal system.[14] The United States Post Office (USPO) was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.[1]Benjamin Franklin headed it briefly.

Before the Revolution, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails then and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post.

Rufus Easton was appointed by Thomas Jefferson first postmaster of St. Louis under the recommendation of Postmaster General Gideon Granger. Rufus Easton was the first postmaster and built the first post office west of the Mississippi. At the same time Easton was appointed by Thomas Jefferson, judge of Louisiana Territory, the largest territory in North America. Bruce Adamson wrote that: "Next to Benjamin Franklin, Rufus Easton was one of the most colorful people in United States Postal History." It was Easton who educated Abraham Lincoln's Attorney General, Edward Bates. In 1815 Edward Bates moved into the Easton home and lived there for years at Third and Elm. Today this is the site of the Jefferson Memorial Park. In 1806 Postmaster General Gideon Granger wrote a three-page letter to Easton, begging him not to partake in a duel with vice-president Aaron Burr. Two years earlier it was Burr who had shot and killed Alexander Hamilton. Many years later in 1852, Easton's son, Major-General Langdon Cheves Easton, was commissioned by William T. Sherman, at Fort Union to deliver a letter to Independence, Missouri. Sherman wrote: "In the Spring of 1852, General Sherman mentioned that the quartermaster, Major L.C. Easton, at Fort Union, New Mexico, had occasion to send some message east by a certain date, and contracted with Aubrey to carry it to the nearest post office (then Independence, Missouri), making his compensation conditional on the time consumed. He was supplied with a good horse, and an order on the outgoing trains for exchange. Though the whole route was infested with hostile Indians, and not a house on it, Aubrey started alone with his rifle. He was fortunate in meeting several outward-bound trains, and thereby made frequent changes of horses, some four or five, and reached Independence in six days, having hardly rested or slept the whole way."[16]

To cover long distances, the Post Office used a hub-and-spoke system, with Washington as the hub and chief sorting center. By 1869, with 27,000 local post offices to deal with, it had changed to sorting mail en route in specialized railroad mail cars, called Railway Post Offices, or RPOs. The system of postal money orders began in 1864. Free mail delivery began in the larger cities in 1863.[17]

The postal system played a crucial role in national expansion. It facilitated expansion into the West by creating an inexpensive, fast, convenient communication system. Letters from early settlers provided information and boosterism to encourage increased migration to the West, helped scattered families stay in touch and provide assistance, assisted entrepreneurs in finding business opportunities, and made possible regular commercial relationships between merchants in the west and wholesalers and factories back east. The postal service likewise assisted the Army in expanding control over the vast western territories. The widespread circulation of important newspapers by mail, such as the New York Weekly Tribune, facilitated coordination among politicians in different states. The postal service helped integrate established areas with the frontier, creating a spirit of nationalism and providing a necessary infrastructure.[18]

The Post Office in the 19th century was a major source of federal patronage. Local postmasterships were rewards for local politicians—often the editors of party newspapers. About three quarters of all federal civilian employees worked for the Post Office. In 1816 it employed 3341 men, and in 1841, 14,290. The volume of mail expanded much faster than the population, as it carried annually 100 letters and 200 newspapers per 1000 white population in 1790, and 2900 letters and 2700 newspapers per thousand in 1840.[19]

The Post Office Department was enlarged during the tenure of President Andrew Jackson. As the Post Office expanded, difficulties were experienced due to a lack of employees and transportation. The Post Office's employees at that time were still subject to the so-called "spoils" system, where faithful political supporters of the executive branch were appointed to positions in the post office and other government corporations as a reward for their patronage. These appointees rarely had prior experience in postal service and mail delivery. This system of political patronage was replaced in 1883, after passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.[20]

In 1823, ten years after the Post Office had first begun to use steamboats to carry mail between post towns where no roads existed, waterways were declared post roads.[21] Once it became clear that the postal system in the United States needed to expand across the entire country, the use of the railroad to transport the mail was instituted in 1832, on one line in Pennsylvania.[22] All railroads in the United States were designated as post routes, after passage of the Act of July 7, 1838. Mail service by railroad increased rapidly thereafter.[23]

The first stamp issues were authorized by an act of Congress and approved on March 3, 1847.[24] The earliest known use of the Franklin 5¢ is July 7, 1847, while the earliest known use of the Washington 10¢ is July 2, 1847. Remaining in postal circulation for only a few years, these issues were declared invalid for postage on July 1, 1851.[25]

An Act of Congress provided for the issuance of stamps on March 3, 1847, and the Postmaster General immediately let a contract to the New York City engraving firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson. The first stamp issue of the U.S. was offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in New York City, with Boston receiving stamps the following day and other cities thereafter. The 5-cent stamp paid for a letter weighing less than 1 oz (28 g) and traveling less than 300 miles, the 10-cent stamp for deliveries to locations greater than 300 miles, or twice the weight deliverable for the 5-cent stamp.

Rail cars designed to sort and distribute mail while rolling were soon introduced.[22] RMS employees sorted mail "on-the-fly" during the journey, and became some of the most skilled workers in the postal service. An RMS sorter had to be able to separate the mail quickly into compartments based on its final destination, before the first destination arrived, and work at the rate of 600 pieces of mail an hour. They were tested regularly for speed and accuracy.[26]

Parcel Post service began with the introduction of International Parcel Post between the USA and foreign countries in 1887.[27] That same year, the U.S. Post Office (predecessor of the USPS) and the Postmaster General of Canada established parcel-post service between the two nations.[27] A bilateral parcel-post treaty between the independent (at the time) Kingdom of Hawaii and the USA was signed on 19 December 1888 and put into effect early in 1889.[28] Parcel-post service between the USA and other countries grew with the signing of successive postal conventions and treaties. While the Post Office agreed to deliver parcels sent into the country under the UPU treaty, it did not institute a domestic parcel-post service for another twenty-five years.[29]

The advent of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in the U.S. in 1896, and the inauguration of a domestic parcel post service by Postmaster GeneralFrank H. Hitchcock in 1913, greatly increased the volume of mail shipped nationwide, and motivated the development of more efficient postal transportation systems.[30] Many rural customers took advantage of inexpensive Parcel Post rates to order goods and products from businesses located hundreds of miles away in distant cities for delivery by mail.[31] From the 1910s to the 1960s, many college students and others used parcel post to mail home dirty laundry, as doing so was less expensive than washing the clothes themselves.[32]

After four-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff was mailed from her parents to her grandparents in Idaho in 1914, mailing of people was prohibited.[31] In 1917, the Post Office imposed a maximum daily mailable limit of two hundred pounds per customer per day after a business entrepreneur, W.H. Coltharp, used inexpensive parcel-post rates to ship more than eighty thousand masonry bricks some four hundred seven miles via horse-drawn wagon and train for the construction of a bank building in Vernal, Utah.[33][34]

The advent of parcel post also led to the growth of mail order businesses that substantially increased rural access to modern goods over what was typically stocked in local general stores.

In 1912, carrier service was announced for establishment in towns of second and third class with $100,000 appropriated by Congress.[35] From January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967, the United States Post Office Department operated the United States Postal Savings System. An Act of Congress of June 25, 1910, established the Postal Savings System in designated Post Offices, effective January 1, 1911. The legislation aimed to get money out of hiding, attract the savings of immigrants accustomed to the postal savings system in their native countries, provide safe depositories for people who had lost confidence in banks, and furnish more convenient depositories for working people. The law establishing the system directed the Post Office Department to redeposit most of the money in the system in local banks, where it earned 2.5 percent interest.

The system paid 2-percent interest per year on deposits. The half percent difference in interest was intended to pay for the operation of the system. Certificates were issued to depositors as proof of their deposit. Depositors in the system were initially limited to hold a balance of $500, but this was raised to $1,000 in 1916 and to $2,500 in 1918. The initial minimum deposit was $1. In order to save smaller amounts for deposit, customers could purchase a 10-cent postal savings card and 10-cent postal savings stamps to fill it. The card could be used to open or add to an account when its value, together with any attached stamps, amounted to one or more dollars, or it could be redeemed for cash. At its peak in 1947, the system held almost $3.4 billion in deposits, with more than four million depositors using 8,141 postal units.[36]

The Post Office Department played an important intelligence role during World War I, implementing the Espionage and Trading with the Enemy Acts, monitoring foreign mail and acting as counter-espionage to help secure allied victory.[citation needed]

On August 12, 1918, the Post Office Department took over airmail service from the United States Army Air Service (USAAS). Assistant Postmaster General, Otto Praeger, appointed Benjamin B. Lipsner to head the civilian-operated Air Mail Service. One of Lipsner's first acts was to hire four pilots, each with at least 1,000 hours flying experience, paying them an average of $4,000 per year ($63.7 thousand today). The Post Office Department used new Standard JR-1B biplanes specially modified to carry the mail while the war was still in progress, but following the war operated mostly World War I surplus military de Havilland DH-4 aircraft.[37]

During 1918, the Post Office hired an additional 36 pilots. In its first year of operation, the Post Office completed 1,208 airmail flights with 90 forced landings. Of those, 53 were due to weather and 37 to engine failure. By 1920, the Air Mail service had delivered 49 million letters.[37] Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975, and international air mail in 1995, when the USPS began transporting First-Class mail by air on a routine basis.

The Post Office was one of the first government departments to regulate obscene materials on a national basis. When the U.S. Congress passed the Comstock laws of 1873, it became illegal to send through the U.S. mail any material considered obscene or indecent, or which promoted abortion issues, birth control, or alcohol consumption.[38]

On March 18, 1970, postal workers in New York City — upset over low wages and poor working conditions, and emboldened by the Civil Rights movement —organized a strike against the United States government. The strike initially involved postal workers in only New York City, but it eventually gained support of over 210,000 United States Post Office Department workers across the nation. While the strike ended without any concessions from the Federal government, it did ultimately allow for postal worker unions and the government to negotiate a contract which gave the unions most of what they wanted, as well as the signing of the Postal Reorganization Act by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970. The Act replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with a new federal agency, the United States Postal Service, and took effect on July 1, 1971.

The United States Postal Service employs some 617,000 workers, making it the third-largest civilian employer in the United States behind the federal government and Wal-Mart.[39] In a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Court noted: "Each day, according to the Government's submissions here, the United States Postal Service delivers some 660 million pieces of mail to as many as 142 million delivery points."[40] As of 2016, the USPS operates 31,585 post offices and locations in the U.S., and delivers 153.4 billion pieces of mail annually.[2]

The USPS operates one of the largest civilian vehicle fleets in the world, with an estimated 227,896 vehicles,[2] the majority of which are the easily identified Chevrolet/Grumman LLV (long-life vehicle), and the newer Ford/Utilimaster FFV (flex-fuel vehicle), originally also referred to as the CRV (carrier route vehicle). It is by geography and volume the globe's largest postal system, delivering 47% of the world's mail.[2] For every penny increase in the national average price of gasoline, the USPS spends an extra $8 million per year to fuel its fleet.[41]

The number of gallons of fuel used in 2009 was 444 million, at a cost of US$1.1 billion.[42] The fleet is notable in that many of its vehicles are right-hand drive, an arrangement intended to give drivers the easiest access to roadside mailboxes. Some Rural Letter Carriers use personal vehicles. Standard postal-owned vehicles do not have license plates. These vehicles are identified by a seven digit number displayed on the front and rear.

In February 2013, the Postal Service announced that on Saturdays it would only deliver packages, mail-order medicines, Priority Mail, and Express Mail, effective August 10, 2013.[43][44] However, this change was reversed by federal law in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013.[45] They now deliver packages on Sunday – only for Amazon.com.[46] During the four weeks preceding Christmas since 2013, packages from all mail classes and senders were delivered on Sunday in some areas.[47]

Parcels are also delivered on holidays, with the exception of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In 2011, numerous media outlets reported that the USPS was going out of business.[50][51][52] The USPS's strategy came under fire as new technologies emerged and the USPS was not finding ways to generate new sources of revenue.[53]

First Class mail volume peaked in 2001[55] and has declined 29% from 1998 to 2008, due to the increasing use of email and the World Wide Web for correspondence and business transactions.[56]

FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS Express Mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages.

Lower volume means lower revenues to support the fixed commitment to deliver to every address once a day, six days a week. According to an official report on November 15, 2012, the U.S. Postal Service lost $15.9 billion its 2012 fiscal year.[citation needed]

In response, the USPS has increased productivity each year from 2000 to 2007,[57] through increased automation, route re-optimization, and facility consolidation.[56] Despite these efforts, the organization saw an $8.5 billion budget shortfall in 2010,[58] and was losing money at a rate of about $3 billion per quarter in 2011.[59]

On December 5, 2011 the USPS announced it would close more than half of its mail processing centers, eliminate 28,000 jobs and reduce overnight delivery of First-Class Mail. This will close down 252 of its 461 processing centers.[60] (At peak mail volume in 2006, the USPS operated 673 facilities.)[61] As of May 2012, the plan was to start the first round of consolidation in summer 2012, pause from September to December, and begin a second round in February 2014; 80% of first class mail would still be delivered overnight through the end of 2013.[62] New delivery standards were issued in January 2015, and the majority of single-piece (not presorted) first-class mail is now being delivered in two days instead of one.[63] Large commercial mailers can still have first-class mail delivered overnight if delivered directly to a processing center in the early morning, though as of 2014 this represented only 11% of first-class mail.[63] Unsorted first-class mail will continued to be delivered anywhere in the contiguous United States within three days.[64]

In July 2011, the USPS announced a plan to close about 3,700 small post offices. Various representatives in Congress protested, and the Senate passed a bill that would have kept open all post offices further than 10 miles from the next office.[65] In May 2012, the service announced it had modified its plan. Instead, rural post offices would remain open with reduced retail hours (some as little as two hours per day) unless there was a community preference for a different option.[66] In a survey of rural customers, 20% preferred the "Village Post Office" replacement (where a nearby private retail store would provide basic mail services with expanded hours), 15% preferred merger with another Post Office, and 11% preferred expanded rural delivery services.[67] Approximately 40% of postal revenue already comes from online purchases or private retail partners including Walmart, Staples, Office Depot, Walgreens, Sam's Club, Costco, and grocery stores.[67] The National Labor Relations Board agreed to hear the American Postal Workers Union's arguments that these counters should be manned by postal employees who earn far more and have "a generous package of health and retirement benefits".[68][69]

On January 28, 2009, Postmaster GeneralJohn E. Potter testified before the Senate[70] that, if the Postal Service could not readjust its payment toward the contractually funding earned employee retiree health benefits, as mandated by the Postal Accountability & Enhancement Act of 2006,[71] the USPS would be forced to consider cutting delivery to five days per week during June, July, and August.

H.R. 22, addressing this issue, passed the House of Representatives and Senate and was signed into law on September 30, 2009.[72] However, Postmaster General Potter continued to advance plans to eliminate Saturday mail delivery.[citation needed]

On June 10, 2009, the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association (NRLCA) was contacted for its input on the USPS's current study of the effect of five-day delivery along with developing an implementation plan for a five-day service plan. A team of Postal Service headquarters executives and staff has been given a time frame of sixty days to complete the study. The current concept examines the effect of five-day delivery with no business or collections on Saturday, with Post Offices with current Saturday hours remaining open.

On Thursday, April 15, 2010, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing to examine the status of the Postal Service and recent reports on short and long term strategies for the financial viability and stability of the USPS entitled "Continuing to Deliver: An Examination of the Postal Service's Current Financial Crisis and its Future Viability." At which, PMG Potter testified that by the year 2020, the USPS cumulative losses could exceed $238 billion, and that mail volume could drop 15 percent from 2009.[73]

In February 2013, the USPS announced that in order to save about $2 billion per year, Saturday delivery service would be discontinued except for packages, mail-order medicines, Priority Mail, Express Mail, and mail delivered to Post Office boxes, beginning August 10, 2013.[43][44][74][75] However the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, passed in March, reversed the cuts to Saturday delivery.[45]

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA)[76] obligates the USPS to fund the present value of earned retirement obligations (essentially past promises which have not yet come due) within a ten-year time span. In contrast, private businesses in the United States have no legal obligation to pay for retirement costs at promise-time rather than retirement-time, but about one quarter do.[77]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is the main bureaucratic organization responsible for the human resources aspect of many federal agencies and their employees. The PAEA created the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund (PSRHB) after Congress removed the Postal Service contribution to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). Most other employees that contribute to the CSRS have 7% deducted from their wages.[citation needed]

On September 30, 2014, the USPS failed to make a $5.7 billion payment on this debt, the fourth such default.[78]

Congress has limited rate increases for First-Class Mail to the cost of inflation, unless approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission.[79] A 3¢ surcharge above inflation increased the 1 oz (28 g) rate to 49¢ in January, 2014, but this was approved by the Commission for two years only.[80]

Comprehensive reform packages considered in the 113th Congress include S.1486[81] and H.R.2748.[82] These include the efficiency measure, supported by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe [83] of ending door-to-door delivery of mail for some or most of the 35 million addresses that currently receive it, replacing that with either curbside boxes or nearby "cluster boxes". This would save $4.5 billion per year out of the $30 billion delivery budget; door-to-door city delivery costs annually on average $353 per stop, curbside $224, and cluster box $160 (and for rural delivery, $278, $176, and $126, respectively).[84][85]

S.1486,[86] also with the support of Postmaster Donahoe,[87] would also allow the USPS to ship alcohol in compliance with state law, from manufacturers to recipients with ID to show they are over 21. This is projected to raise approximately $50 million per year.[87] (Shipping alcoholic beverages is currently illegal under 18 U.S.C.§ 1716(f).)

In 2014, the Postal Service was requesting reforms to worker's compensation, moving from a pension to defined contribution retirement savings plan, and paying senior retiree health care costs out of Medicare funds, as is done for private-sector workers.[88]

The independent Postal Regulatory Commission (formerly the Postal Rate Commission) is also controlled by appointees of the President confirmed by the Senate. It oversees postal rates and related concerns, having the authority to approve or reject USPS proposals.

The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business. It is, however, an "establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States", (39 U.S.C.§ 201) as it is controlled by Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a government agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail. Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.[89]

The U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld the USPS's statutory monopoly on access to letter boxes against a First Amendmentfreedom of speech challenge; it thus remains illegal in the U.S. for anyone, other than the employees and agents of the USPS, to deliver mailpieces to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail".[90]

The Postal Service also has a Mailers' Technical Advisory Committee and local Postal Customer Councils, which are advisory and primarily involve business customers.[91]

Article I, section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads,[92] which has been interpreted as a de facto Congressional monopoly over the delivery of first class residential mail – which has been defined as non-urgent residential letters (not packages). Accordingly, no other system for delivering first class residential mail – public or private – has been tolerated, absent Congress's consent.[citation needed]

The mission of the Postal Service is to provide the American public with trusted universal postal service. While not explicitly defined, the Postal Service's universal service obligation (USO) is broadly outlined in statute and includes multiple dimensions: geographic scope, range of products, access to services and facilities, delivery frequency, affordable and uniform pricing, service quality, and security of the mail. While other carriers may claim to voluntarily provide delivery on a broad basis, the Postal Service is the only carrier with a legal obligation to provide all the various aspects of universal service.[93]

Proponents of universal service principles claim that since any obligation must be matched by the financial capability to meet that obligation, the postal monopoly was put in place as a funding mechanism for the USO, and it has been in place for over a hundred years. It consists of two parts: the Private Express Statutes (PES) and the mailbox access rule. The PES refers to the Postal Service's monopoly on the delivery of letters, and the mailbox rule refers to the Postal Service's exclusive access to customer mailboxes.[94]

Proponents of universal service principles further claim that eliminating or reducing the PES or mailbox rule would affect the ability of the Postal Service to provide affordable universal service. If, for example, the PES and the mailbox rule were to be eliminated, and the USO maintained, then either billions of dollars in tax revenues or some other source of funding would have to be found.[95][citation needed]

Some proponents[by whom?] of universal service principles suggest that private communications that are protected by the veil of government promote the exchange of free ideas and communications. This separates private communications from the ability of a private for-profit or non-profit organization to corrupt. Security for the individual is in this way protected by the United States Post Office, maintaining confidentiality and anonymity, as well as government employees being much less likely to be instructed by superiors to engage in nefarious spying.[citation needed] It is seen by some[by whom?] as a dangerous step to extract the universal service principle from the post office, as the untainted nature of private communications is preserved as assurance of the protection of individual freedom of privacy.

However, as the recent notice of a termination of mail service to residents of the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness indicates, mail service has been contracted to private firms such as Arnold Aviation for many decades. KTVB-TV reported:[96]

"We cannot go out every week and pick up our mail....it's impossible", said Heinz Sippel. "Everyone gets their mail. Why can't we?" said Sue Anderson. Getting mail delivered, once a week, by airplane is not a luxury, it's a necessity for those who live in Idaho's vast wilderness – those along the Salmon and Selway rivers. It's a service that's been provided to them for more than half a century – mostly by Ray Arnold of Arnold Aviation.

The decision was reversed; U.S. Postmaster General John Potter indicated that acceptable service to back country customers could not be achieved in any other fashion than continuing an air mail contract with Arnold Aviation to deliver the mail.[97]

The Postal Act of 2006 required the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to submit a report to the President and Congress on universal postal service and the postal monopoly in December 2008. The report must include any recommended changes. The Postal Service report supports the requirement that the PRC is to consult with and solicit written comments from the Postal Service. In addition, the Government Accountability Office is required to evaluate broader business model issues by 2011.

On October 15, 2008, the Postal Service submitted a report[98] to the PRC on its position related to the Universal Service Obligation (USO). It said no changes to the USO and restriction on mailbox access were necessary at this time, but increased regulatory flexibility was required to ensure affordable universal service in the future. In 2013, the Postal Service announced that starting August 2013, Saturday delivery would be discontinued.

Obligations of the USO include uniform prices, quality of service, access to services, and six-day delivery to every part of the country. To assure financial support for these obligations, the postal monopoly provides the Postal Service the exclusive right to deliver letters and restricts mailbox access solely for mail. The report argued that eliminating or reducing either aspect of the monopoly "would have a devastating impact on the ability...to provide the affordable universal service that the country values so highly." Relaxing access to the mailbox would also pose security concerns, increase delivery costs, and hurt customer service, according to the Post Office. The report notes:

It is somewhat misleading to characterize the mailbox rule as a "monopoly," because the enforcement of 18 U.S.C.§ 1725 leaves customers with ample alternative means of delivering their messages. Customers can deliver their messages either by paying postage, by placing messages on or under a door or a doormat, by using newspaper or non-postal boxes, by telephoning or emailing, by engaging in person-to-person delivery in public areas, by tacking or taping their notices on a door post, or by placing advertisements in local newspapers. These methods are comparable in efficacy to communication via the mailbox.

Regarding the monopoly on delivery of letters, the report notes that the monopoly is not complete, as there is an exception for letters where either the amount paid for private carriage of the letter equals at least six times the current rate for the first ounce of a single-piece First-Class Mail letter (also known as the "base rate" or "base tariff") or the letter weighs at least 12.5 ounces.

The Postal Service said that the USO should continue to be broadly defined and there should be no changes to the postal monopoly. Any changes would have far-reaching effects on customers and the trillion dollar mailing industry. "A more rigidly defined USO would ... ultimately harm the American public and businesses," according to the report, which cautions that any potential change must be studied carefully and the effects fully understood.

FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS Express Mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages. Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent letters and may not directly ship to U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial destinations. However, both companies have transit agreements with the USPS in which an item can be dropped off with either FedEx or UPS who will then provide shipment up to the destination post office serving the intended recipient where it will be transferred for delivery to the U.S. Mail destination, including Post Office Box destinations.[99][100] These services also deliver packages which are larger and heavier than USPS will accept. DHL Express was the third major competitor until February 2009, when it ceased domestic delivery operations in the United States.

The Post Office Department owned and operated the first public telegraph lines in the United States, starting in 1844 from Washington to Baltimore, and eventually extending to New York, Boston, Buffalo, and Philadelphia. In 1847 the telegraph system was privatized, except for a period during World War I, when it was used to accelerate the delivery of letters arriving at night.[103]

Between 1942 and 1945 "V-Mail" (for "Victory Mail") service was available for military mail. Letters were converted into microfilm and reprinted near the destination, to save room on transport vehicles for military cargo.[104]

From 1982 to 1985 Electronic Computer Originated Mail, known as E-COM was accepted for bulk mailings. Text was transmitted electronically to one of 25 post offices nationwide. The Postal Service would print the mail and put it in special envelopes bearing a blue E-COM logo. Delivery was assured within 2 days.[105]

To improve accuracy and efficiency, the Postal Service introduced the Intelligent Mail program to complement the ZIP code system. This system, which was intended to replace the depreciated POSTNET system, allows bulk mailers to use pre-printed bar codes to assist in mail delivery and sorting. Additional features, called Enhanced, or Full-Service, Intelligent Mail Barcodes allow for mail tracking of bulk mail through the postal system up to the final delivery Post Office.[citation needed]

Criticism of the universal service requirement and the postal monopoly[edit]

Critics of the universal service requirement and the statutory postal monopoly include several professional economists advocating for the privatization of the mail delivery system, or at least a relaxation of the universal service model that currently exists.[106] Rick Geddes argued in 2000:[107]

First, basic economics implies that rural customers are unlikely to be without service under competition; they would simply have to pay the true cost of delivery to them, which may or may not be lower than under monopoly.

Second, basic notions of fairness imply that the cross-subsidy should be eliminated. To the extent that people make choices about where they live, they should assume the costs of that decision.

Third, there is no reason why the government monopoly is necessary to ensure service to sparsely populated areas. The government could easily award competitive contracts to private firms for that service.

Fourth, early concerns that rural residents of the United States would somehow become isolated without federally subsidized mail delivery today are simply unfounded. ... Once both sender and receiver have access to a computer, the marginal cost of sending an electronic message is close to zero.

Furthermore, some economists have argued that because public enterprises may pursue objectives different than profit maximization, they might have more of an incentive than profit-maximizing firms to behave anticompetitively through policies such as predatory pricing, misstating costs, and creating barriers to entry.[108] To resolve those issues, one economist proposes a cost-allocation model that would determine the optimal allocation of USPS's common costs by finding the share of costs that would maximize USPS profits from its competitive products.[109] Postal regulators could use such a cost model to ensure that the Postal Service is not abusing its statutory monopoly by subsidizing price cuts in competitive product markets with revenue obtained from the monopolized market.[110]

Postal Inspectors enforce over 200 federal laws providing for the protection of mail in investigations of crimes that may adversely affect or fraudulently use the U.S. Mail, the postal system or postal employees.

The USPIS has the power to enforce the USPS monopoly by conducting search and seizure raids on entities they suspect of sending non-urgent mail through overnight delivery competitors. According to the American Enterprise Institute, a private conservative think tank, the USPIS raided Equifax offices in 1993 to ascertain if the mail they were sending through Federal Express was truly "extremely urgent." It was found that the mail was not, and Equifax was fined $30,000.[112][113]

Lastly, the PIS oversees the activities of the Postal Police Force who patrol in and around selected high-risk postal facilities in major metropolitan areas in the United States and its territories.

The primary purpose of the OIG is to prevent, detect and report fraud, waste and program abuse, and promote efficiency in the operations of the Postal Service. The OIG has "oversight" responsibility for all activities of the Postal Inspection Service.

All mailable articles (e.g., letters, flats, machinable parcels, irregular parcels, etc.) shipped within the United States must comply with an array of standards published in the USPS Domestic Mail Manual (DMM).[114] Before addressing the mailpiece, one must first comply with the various mailability standards relating to attributes of the actual mailpiece such as: minimum/maximum dimensions[115] and weight, acceptable mailing containers, proper mailpiece sealing/closure, utilization of various markings, and restrictions relating to various hazardous (e.g., explosives, flammables, etc.) and restricted (e.g., cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, etc.) materials, as well as others articulated in § 601 of the DMM.[116]

The USPS specifies the following key elements when preparing the face of a mailpiece:

Proper Placement: The Delivery Address should be left-justified and located roughly in the center of mailpiece's largest side. More precisely, on a letter-size piece, the recommended address placement is within the optical character reader (OCR) read area, which is a space on the address side of the mailpiece defined by these boundaries: Left – 1/2 inch (13 mm) from the left edge of the piece; Right – 1/2 inch (13 mm) from the right edge of the piece; Top – 2-3/4 inches (70 mm) from the bottom edge of the piece; Bottom – 5/8 inch (16 mm) from the bottom edge of the piece.[117] Preferred placement of a return address is in the upper left portion of the mailpiece—on the side of the piece bearing postage.[118] Finally, postage (e.g., stamps, meter imprints, information-based indicia [IBI], etc.) is to be affixed in the upper right corner of the address side of the mail cover. It should be noted that any stamp/indicia partly concealed or otherwise obscured by an overlapping stamp/indicia may not be counted as valid postage.[119]

Delivery Address (party receiving mail): The mail piece must have the address of the intended recipient, visible and legible, only on the side of the mail piece bearing postage. Generally, the name of the addressee should be included above the address itself. A ZIP+4 code will facilitate delivery.[120]

Return Address (party sending mail): A return address tells the USPS where the sender wants the mail returned if it is undeliverable. Usage of a return address is required for some postal services (including Priority Mail, Express Mail, Periodicals in envelopes or wrappers, Insured Mail, Registered Mail, and parcel services).[121]

Postage Payment: All mailpieces must include appropriate valid postage. Postage payment may be in the form of stamps, stamped stationery, precanceled stamps, postage meter imprints & PC Postage products ("Postage Evidencing Systems"), or permit imprint (indicia).[122] Members of the U.S. Congress, among others, have franking privileges, which require only a signature.

Domestic First-Class Mail costs 49¢ for envelopes (34¢ for post cards) and upwards, depending on the weight and dimensions of the letter and the class.

Mail going to naval vessels is known as the Fleet Post Office (FPO) and to Army or Air Force installations use the city abbreviation APO (Army Post Office or Air Force Post Office).

The format of a return address is similar. Though some style manuals recommend using a comma between the city and state name when typesetting addresses in other contexts, for optimal automatic character recognition, the Post Office does not recommend this when addressing mail. The official recommendation is to use all upper case block letters with proper formats and abbreviations, and leave out all punctuation except for the hyphen in the ZIP+4 code. If the address is unusually formatted or illegible enough, it will require hand-processing, delaying that particular item. The USPS publishes the entirety of their postal addressing standards.[124]

Postal address verification tools and services are offered by the USPS and third party companies to help ensure mail is deliverable by fixing formatting, appending information such as ZIP code and validating the address is a valid delivery point. Customers can look up ZIP codes and verify addresses using USPS Web Tools available on the official USPS website and Facebook page, as well as on third-party sites.[125]

Delivery Point Validation (DPV) provides the highest level of address accuracy checking. In a DPV process, the address is checked against the AMS data file to ensure that it exists as an active delivery point.[126] The USPS does not offer DPV validation on their website however there are companies that offer services to perform DPV verification.

All unused U.S. postage stamps issued since 1861 are still valid as postage at their indicated value. Stamps with no value shown or denominated by a letter are also still valid, although the value depends upon the particular stamp. For some stamps issued without a printed value, the current value is the original value. But some stamps beginning in 1988 or earlier, including "Forever Stamps" that were issued beginning in April 2007, and all 1st class mail 1st ounce stamps beginning 2011-01-21, the value is the current value of a 1st class mail 1st ounce stamps. (The USPS calls these "Forever Stamps". The generic name is non-denominated postage.)

Forever stamps are sold at the First-Class Mail postage rate at the time of purchase, but will always be valid for First-Class Mail (1 oz and under), no matter how rates rise in the future.[129][130] Britain has had a similar stamp since 1989. The cost of mailing a 1 oz (28 g) First-Class letter increased to 49 cents on January 26, 2014.[80]

A postage meter is a mechanical device used to create and apply physical evidence of postage (or franking) to mailed matter. Postage meters are regulated by a country's postal authority; for example, in the United States, the United States Postal Service specifies the rules for the creation, support, and use of postage meters. A postage meter imprints an amount of postage, functioning as a postage stamp, a cancellation and a dated postmark all in one. The meter stamp serves as proof of payment and eliminates the need for adhesive stamps.

In addition to using standard stamps, postage can now be printed in the form of an electronic stamp, or e-stamp, from a personal computer using a system called Information Based Indicia. This online PC Postage method relies upon application software on the customer's computer contacting a postal security device at the office of the postal service.[131]

Electronic Verification System (eVS)[132] is the Postal Service's integrated mail management technology that centralizes payment processing and electronic postage reports. Part of an evolving suite of USPS electronic payment services called PostalOne!,[133] eVS allows mailers shipping large volumes of parcels through the Postal Service a way to circumvent use of hard-copy manifests, postage statements and drop-shipment verification forms. Instead, mailers can pay postage automatically through a centralized account and track payments online.

Beginning in August 2007, the Postal Service began requiring mailers shipping Parcel Select packages using a permit imprint to use eVS for manifesting their packages.

Slowest but cheapest service for packages too large or heavy for First Class—uses surface transport.

2–9 day service to contiguous U.S., 4–14 days internal to AK/HI/territories, 3–6 weeks between mainland and outlying areas (travels by ship).[137]

Variable pricing by weight, size and distance.

Free forwarding if recipient has filed change-of-address form, or return if the item is undeliverable.

Media Mail—formerly "Book Rate"

Books and recorded media only.

No advertising.

Pricing by weight only.

Transit time similar to Parcel Post.

Cheaper than Parcel Post but only due to increased restrictions on package contents.

Library Mail

Similar to Media Mail, but cheaper and restricted to academic institutions, public libraries, museums, etc.

The Post Office will not deliver packages heavier than 70 pounds (32 kg) or if the length (the package's longest dimension) plus the girth (the measurement around the package at its largest point in the two shorter dimensions) is greater than 108 inches (270 cm) combined (130 inches [330 cm] for Parcel Post)[137]

Collect on Delivery (C.O.D.) allows merchants to offer customers an option to pay upon delivery, up to $1000. Includes insurance.

USPS Tracking provides proof of delivery to sorting facilities, local post office and destination, but no signature is required.

Insurance is shipping insurance against loss or damage for the value of the goods mailed. Amount of coverage can be specified, up to $5,000.

Registered Mail is used for highly valuable or irreplaceable items, and classified information up to the "secret" level.[140] Registered mail is transported separately from other mail, in locked containers. Tracking is included and insurance up to $25,000 is available.[141]

Restricted Delivery requires delivery to a specific person or their authorized agent, not just to a mailbox.

Return Receipt actively sends signature confirmation back to the sender by postcard or emailed PDF (as opposed to merely putting this information into the online tracking system).

Signature Confirmation requires a delivery signature, which is kept on file. The online tracking system displays the first initial and last name of the signatory.

In May 2007, the USPS restructured international service names to correspond with domestic shipping options. Formerly, USPS International services[142] were categorized as Airmail (Letter Post), Economy (Surface) Parcel Post, Airmail Parcel Post, Global Priority, Global Express, and Global Express Guaranteed Mail. The former Airmail (Letter Post) is now First-Class Mail International,[143][144] and includes small packages weighing up to four pounds (1.8 kg). Economy Parcel Post was discontinued for international service, while Airmail Parcel Post was replaced by Priority Mail International. Priority Mail International Flat-Rate packaging in various sizes was introduced, with the same conditions of service previously used for Global Priority. Global Express is now Express Mail International, while Global Express Guaranteed is unchanged. The international mailing classes with a tracking ability are Express, Express Guaranteed, and Priority (except that tracking is not available for Priority Mail International Flat Rate Envelopes or Priority Mail International Small Flat Rate Boxes).[145]

One of the major changes in the new naming and services definitions is that USPS-supplied mailing boxes for Priority and Express mail are now allowed for international use. These services are offered to ship letters and packages to almost every country and territory on the globe. The USPS provides much of this service by contracting with a private parcel service, FedEx.[146]

An m-bag

The USPS provides an M-bag[147] service for international shipment of printed matter;[148] previously surface M-bags existed, but with the 2007 elimination of surface mail, only airmail M-bags remain.[149] The term "M-bag" is not expanded in USPS publications; M-bags are simply defined as "direct sacks of printed matter ... sent to a single foreign addressee at a single address";[148] however, the term is sometimes referred to informally as "media bag", as the bag can also contain "discs, tapes, and cassettes", in addition to books, for which the usual umbrella term is "media"; some also refer to them as "mail bags".

Military mail is billed at domestic rates when being sent from the United States to a military outpost, and is free when sent by deployed military personnel. The overseas logistics are handled by the Military Postal Service Agency in the Department of Defense.[150] Outside of forward areas and active operations, military mail First-Class takes 7–10 days, Priority 10–15 days, and Parcel Post about 24 days.[137]

Each associated state maintains its own government-run mail service for delivery to and pickup from retail customers.[151][152][153]

The associated states are integrated into the USPS addressing and ZIP code system.

The USPS is responsible for transporting mail between the United States and the associated states,[151] and between the individual states of the Federated States of Micronesia.[153]

The associated states synchronize postal services and rates with the USPS.

The USPS treats mail to and from the associated states as domestic mail, (as of November 19, 2007, after a 23-month period of being treated as international mail).[154] Incoming mail does require customs declarations because, like some U.S. territories, the associated states are outside the main customs territory of the United States.[155]

In 2007, the US Postal Service discontinued its outbound international surface mail ("sea mail") service,[156] mainly because of increased costs. Returned undeliverable surface parcels had become an expensive problem for the USPS.[157] The discontinuation has been criticized by independent booksellers, by other small businesses which ship internationally, by the Peace Corps, and by military personnel. Domestic surface mail (now "Retail Ground" or "Commercial Parcel Select") remains available.

Processing of standard sized envelopes and cards is highly automated, including reading of handwritten addresses. Mail from individual customers and public postboxes is collected by mail carriers into plastic tubs, which are taken to one of approximately 251 Processing and Distribution Centers (P&DC) across the United States. Each P&DC sorts mail for a given region (typically with a radius of around 200 miles (320 km)) and connects with the national network for interregional mail.[159] The USPS has consolidated mail sorting for large regions into the P&DCs on the basis that most mail is addressed to faraway destinations,[160] but for cities at the edge of a P&DC's region, this means all locally addressed mail must now travel long distances (that is, to and from the P&DC for sorting) to reach nearby addresses.[161]

At the P&DC, mail is emptied into hampers which are then automatically dumped into a Dual Pass Rough Cull System (DPRCS). As mail travels through the DPRCS, large items, such as packages and mail bundles, are removed from the stream. As the remaining mail enters the first machine for processing standard mail, the Advanced Facer-Canceler System (AFCS), pieces that passed through the DPRCS but do not conform to physical dimensions for processing in the AFCS (e.g., large envelopes or overstuffed standard envelopes) are automatically diverted from the stream. Mail removed from the DPRCS and AFCS is manually processed or sent to parcel sorting machines.

In contrast to the previous system, which merely canceled and postmarked the upper right corner of the envelope, thereby missing any stamps which were inappropriately placed, the Advanced Facer-Canceler System locates indicia (stamp or metered postage mark), regardless of the orientation of the mail as it enters the machine, and cancels it by applying a postmark. Detection of indicia enables the AFCS to determine the orientation of each mailpiece and sort it accordingly, rotating pieces as necessary so all mail is sorted right-side up and faced in the same direction in each output bin.

Mail is output by the machine into three categories: mail already affixed with a bar code and addressed (such as business reply envelopes and cards); mail with machine printed (typed) addresses; and mail with handwritten addresses. Additionally, machines with a recent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) upgrade have the capability to read the address information, including handwritten, and sort the mail based on local or outgoing ZIP codes.

Mail with typed addresses goes to a Multiline Optical Character Reader (MLOCR) which reads the ZIP Code and address information and prints the appropriate bar code onto the envelope. Mail (actually the scanned image of the mail) with handwritten addresses (and machine-printed ones that are not easily recognized) goes to the Remote Bar Coding System. It also corrects spelling errors and, where there is an error, omission, or conflict in the written address, identifies the most likely correct address.

When it has decided on a correct address, it prints the appropriate bar code onto the envelopes, similarly to the MLOCR system. RBCS also has facilities in place, called Remote Encoding Centers, that have humans look at images of mail pieces and enter the address data. The address data is associated with the image via an ID Tag, a fluorescentbarcode printed by mail processing equipment on the back of mail pieces.

Processed mail is imaged by the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) system to allow easier tracking of hazardous substances. Images are taken at more than 200 mail processing centers, and are destroyed after being retained for 30 days.[162]

If a customer has filed a change of address card and his or her mail is detected in the mailstream with the old address, the mailpiece is sent to a machine that automatically connects to a Computerized Forwarding System database to determine the new address. If this address is found, the machine will paste a label over the former address with the current address. The mail is returned to the mailstream to forward to the new location.

Mail with addresses that cannot be resolved by the automated system are separated for human intervention. If a local postal worker can read the address, he or she manually sorts it out according to the ZIP code on the article. If the address cannot be read, mail is either returned to the sender (First-Class Mail with a valid return address) or is sent to the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia (formerly known as the dead letter office). At this office, the mail is opened to try to find an address to forward to. If an address is found, the contents are resealed and delivered. Otherwise, the items are held for 90 days in case of inquiry by the customer; if they are not claimed, they are either destroyed or auctioned off at the monthly Postal Service Unclaimed Parcel auction to raise money for the service.

Once the mail is bar coded, it is automatically sorted by a Delivery Bar Code Sorter (DBCS) that reads the bar code, identifies the destination of the mailpiece, and sends it to an appropriate tray that corresponds to the next segment of its journey.

Regional mail is either trucked to the appropriate local post office, or kept in the building for carrier routes served directly from the P&DC. Out-of-region mail is trucked to the airport and then flown, usually as baggage on commercial airlines, to the airport nearest the destination station. At the destination P&DC, mail is once again read by a DBCS which sorts items to local post offices; this includes grouping mailpieces by individual mail carrier.

At the carrier route level, 95% of letters arrive pre-sorted;[159] the remaining mail must be sorted by hand. The Post Office is working to increase the percentage of automatically sorted mail, including a pilot program to sort "flats".[163]

FedEx provides air transport service to USPS for Priority and Express Mail. Priority Mail and Express Mail are transported from Priority Mail processing centers to the closest FedEx-served airport, where they are handed off to FedEx. FedEx then flies them to the destination airport and hands them back to USPS for transport to the local post office and delivery.

Although its customer service centers are called post offices in regular speech, the USPS recognizes several types of postal facilities, including the following:

A main post office (formerly known as a general post office) is the primary postal facility in a community.

A station or post office station is a postal facility that is not the main post office, but that is within the corporate limits of the community.

A branch or post office branch is a postal facility that is not the main post office and that is outside the corporate limits of the community.

A classified unit is a station or branch operated by USPS employees in a facility owned or leased by the USPS.

A contract postal unit (or CPU) is a station or branch operated by a contractor, typically in a store or other place of business.[164]

A community post office (or CPO) is a contract postal unit providing services in a small community in which other types of post office facilities have been discontinued.

A finance unit is a station or branch that provides window services and accepts mail, but does not provide delivery.

A village post office (VPO) is an entity such as a local business or government center that provides postal services through a contract with the USPS. First introduced in 2011 as an integral part of the USPS plan to close low volume post offices, village post offices will fill the role of the post office within a ZIP code.[165]

A processing and distribution center (P&DC, or processing and distribution facility, formerly known as a General Mail Facility) is a central mail facility that processes and dispatches incoming and outgoing mail to and from a designated service area (251 nationwide).[159][166]

An international service center (ISC) is an international mail processing facility. There are only five such USPS facilities in the United States, located in Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco.[167]

A network distribution center, formerly known as a bulk mail center (BMC), is a central mail facility that processes bulk rate parcels as the hub in a hub and spoke network.

An auxiliary sorting facility (ASF) is a central mail facility that processes bulk rate parcels as spokes in a hub and spoke network.

A remote encoding center (REC) is a facility at which clerks receive images of problem mail pieces (those with hard-to-read addresses, etc.) via secure Internet-type feeds and manually type the addresses they can decipher, using a special encoding protocol. The mail pieces are then sprayed with the correct addresses or are sorted for further handling according to the instructions given via encoding. The total number of RECs is down from 55 in 1998 to just 1 center in December 2016. The last REC is in Salt Lake City, Utah.[168]

While common usage refers to all types of postal facilities as "substations", the USPS Glossary of Postal Terms does not define or even list that word.[164] Post Offices often share facilities with other governmental organizations located within a city's central business district. In those locations, often Courthouses and Federal Buildings, the building is owned by the General Services Administration while the U.S. Postal Services operates as a tenant.[169] The USPS retail system has approximately 36,000 post offices, stations, and branches.[170]

In the year 2004, the USPS began deploying Automated Postal Centers (APCs).[171] APCs are unattended kiosks that are capable of weighing, franking, and storing packages for later pickup as well as selling domestic and international postage stamps. Since its introduction, APCs do not take cash payments – they only accept credit or debit cards. Similarly, traditional vending machines are available at many post offices to purchase stamps, though these are being phased out in many areas.[172] Due to increasing use of Internet services, as of June 2009, no retail post office windows are open 24 hours; overnight services are limited to those provided by an Automated Postal Center.[173]

Airport Transfer Centers (ATCs), which will serve as transfer points only; and

Remote Encoding Centers (RECs).

Over a period of years, these facilities are expected to replace Processing & Distribution Centers, Customer Service Facilities, Bulk Mail Centers, Logistic and Distribution Centers, annexes, the Hub and Spoke Program, Air Mail Centers, and International Service Centers.

The changes are a result of the declining volumes of single-piece First-Class Mail, population shifts, the increase in drop shipments by advertising mailers at destinating postal facilities, advancements in equipment and technology, redundancies in the existing network, and the need for operational flexibility.

The last air delivery route in the continental U.S., to residents in the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness, was scheduled to be ended in June 2009. The weekly bush plane route, contracted out to an air taxi company, had in its final year an annual cost of $46,000, or $2400/year per residence, over ten times the average cost of delivering mail to a residence in the United States.[175] This decision has been reversed by the U.S. Postmaster General.[176]

Private US parcel forwarding or US mail forwarding companies focusing on personal shopper, relocation, Ex-pat and mail box services often interface with the United States Postal Service for transporting of mail and packages for their customers.[citation needed]

From 1810, mail was delivered seven days a week. In 1828, local religious leaders noticed a decline in Sunday-morning church attendance because of local post offices' doubling as gathering places. These leaders appealed to the government to intervene and close post offices on Sundays. The government, however, declined, and mail was delivered 7 days a week until 1912.[177][178]

Today, U.S. Mail (with the exception of Express Mail)[179] is not delivered on Sunday, except in a few towns in which the local religion has had an effect on the policy, such as Loma Linda, California, which has a significant Seventh-day Adventist population[177] and where U.S. Mail is delivered Sunday through Friday, with the exception of observed federal holidays.

Saturday delivery was temporarily suspended in April 1957, because of lack of funds, but quickly restored.[180][181]

Budget problems prompted consideration of dropping Saturday delivery starting around 2009. This culminated in a 2013 announcement that regular mail services would be cut to five days a week, which was reversed by Congress before it could take effect. (See the section Revenue decline and planned cuts.)

Originally, mail was not delivered to homes and businesses, but to post offices. In 1863, "city delivery" began in urban areas with enough customers to make this economical. This required streets to be named, houses to be numbered, with sidewalks and lighting provided, and these street addresses to be added to envelopes.[182] The number of routes served expanded over time. In 1891, the first experiments with Rural Free Delivery began in less densely populated areas. There is currently an effort to reduce direct delivery in favor of mailbox clusters.

To compensate for high mail volume and slow long-distance transportation which saw mail arrive at post offices throughout the day, deliveries were made multiple times a day. This ranged from twice for residential areas to up to seven times for the central business district of Brooklyn, New York.[183] In the late 19th century, mail boxes were encouraged, saving carriers the time it took to deliver directly to the addressee in person; in the 1910s and 1920s, they were phased in as a requirement for service.[182] In the 1940s, multiple daily deliveries began to be reduced, especially on Saturdays. By 1990, the last twice-daily deliveries in New York City were eliminated.

Today, mail is delivered once a day on-site to most private homes and businesses. The USPS still distinguishes between city delivery (where carriers generally walk and deliver to mailboxes hung on exterior walls or porches, or to commercial reception areas) and rural delivery (where carriers generally drive).[184] With "curbside delivery", mailboxes are at the ends of driveways, on the nearest convenient road. "Central point delivery" is used in some locations, where several nearby residences share a "cluster" of individual mailboxes in a single housing.

Some customers choose to use post office boxes for an additional fee, for privacy or convenience. This provides a locked box at the post office to which mail is addressed and delivered (usually earlier in the day than home delivery). Customers in less densely populated areas where there is no city delivery and who do not qualify for rural delivery may receive mail only through post office boxes. High-volume business customers can also arrange for special pick-up.[185][186]

Another option is the old-style general delivery, for people who have neither post office boxes nor street addresses. Mail is held at the post office until they present identification and pick it up.

Some customers receive free post office boxes if the USPS declines to provide door-to-door delivery to their location or a nearby box.[187] People with medical problems can request door-to-door delivery.[188]Homeless people are also eligible for post office boxes at the discretion of the local postmaster, or can use general delivery.[189]

In December 2012, the USPS began a limited one-year trial of same-day deliveries directly from retailers or distribution hubs to residential addresses in the same local area, a service it dubbed "Metro Post".[190][191] The trial was initially limited to San Francisco and the only retailer to participate in the first few weeks was 1-800-FLOWERS.[192]

In November 2013, the Postal Service began regular package delivery on Sundays for Amazon customers in New York and Los Angeles,[193] which it expanded to 15 cities in May 2014.[194] Amazon Sunday delivery has now been expanded to most major markets as of September, 2015.

Residential customers can fill out a form to forward mail to a new address, and can also send pre-printed forms to any of their frequent correspondents. They can also put their mail on "hold", for example, while on vacation. The Post Office will store mail during the hold, instead of letting it overflow in the mailbox. These services are not available to large buildings and customers of a commercial mail receiving agency,[195] where mail is subsorted by non-Post Office employees into individual mailboxes.

Postal money orders provide a safe alternative to sending cash through the mail, and are available in any amount up to $1000. Like a bank cheque, money orders are cashable only by the recipient. Unlike a personal bank check, they are prepaid and therefore cannot be returned because of insufficient funds.[196] Money orders are a declining business for the USPS, as companies like PayPal, PaidByCash and others are offering electronic replacements.

A January 2014 report by the Inspector General of the USPS suggested that the agency could earn $8.9 billion per year in revenue by providing financial services, especially in areas where there are no local banks but there is a local post office, and to customers who currently do not have bank accounts.[198]

The Postal Service is the nation's second-largest civilian employer.[199] As of 2011[update], it employed 574,000 personnel, divided into offices, processing centers, and actual post offices.[199] The United States Postal Service would rank 29th on the 2010 Fortune 500 list, if considered a private company.[199]

USPS employees are divided into three major crafts according to the work they engage in:

Mail carriers, also referred to as mailmen or letter carriers, prepare and deliver mail and parcels. They are divided into two categories: City Letter Carriers, who are represented by the NALC, and Rural Letter Carriers, who are represented by the NRLCA. City Carriers are paid hourly with automatic overtime paid after 8 hours or 40 hours a week of duty. City Carriers are required to work in any kind of weather, daylight or dark and carry three bundles of mail (letters in one hand, magazines in the other and advertisements in a mailbag) in addition to parcels up to a total of 70 lbs. Mail routes are outfitted with a number of scanpoints (mailbox barcodes) on random streets every 30 to 40 minutes apart to keep track of the Carriers' whereabouts up until the last 5 minutes of any given workday.

Rural carriers are under a form of salary called "evaluated hours", usually with overtime built into their pay. The evaluated hours are created by having all mail counted for a period of two or four weeks, and a formula used to create the set dollar amount they will be paid for each day worked until the next time the route is counted.

Mail handlers and processors, prepare, separate, load and unload mail and parcels, by delivery ZIP code and station, for the clerks. They work almost exclusively at the plants or larger mail facilities now after having their duties excessed and reassigned to clerks in Post Offices and Station branches.

Clerks, have a dual function by design of where their assignment is. Window clerks directly handle customer service needs at the counter, sort box mail and also sort first class letters, standard and bulk-rate mail for the carriers on the work floor. Clerks may also work alongside mail handlers in large sorting facilities, outside of the public view, sorting mail. Data Conversion Operators, who encode address information at Remote Encoding Centers, are also members of the clerk craft. Mail handlers and Clerks are represented by the NPMHU and the APWU respectively.

Other non-managerial positions in the USPS include:

Maintenance and custodians, who see to the overall operation and cleaning of mail sorting machines, work areas, public parking and general facility operations.

City Carrier Assistants. (CCA's) With the Das Arbitration award the designation of PTF City Carrier has been abolished. TE City Carriers will have the opportunity to become CCA's. A CCA is a non-career employee who is hired for a 360-day term, similar to what TE's had. CCA's earn annual leave. CCA's, unlike TE's do have a direct path to becoming career employees. When excess City Carrier positions exist the CCA in that work installation with the highest "relative standing" will be promoted to a career employee and be assigned to the vacant position.

Career, Part Time Flexible and Transitional employees (Career, PTF & TE) There are a variety of other non-managerial positions in such crafts as accounting, information technology, and the remote encoding center. These are under a different contract than plant workers or mail carriers.[201]

Though the USPS employs many individuals, as more Americans send information via email, fewer postal workers are needed to work dwindling amounts of mail. Post offices and mail facilities are constantly downsizing, replacing craft positions with new machines and consolidating mail routes through the MIARAP (Modified Interim Alternate Route Adjustment Process) agreement. A major round of job cuts, early retirements, and a construction freeze were announced on March 20, 2009.[202]

In the early 1990s, widely publicized workplace shootings by disgruntled employees at USPS facilities led to a Human Resource effort to provide care for stressed workers and resources for coworker conflicts.[203] Due to media coverage, postal employees gained a reputation among the general public as more likely to be mentally ill. The USPS Commission on a Safe and Secure Workplace found that "Postal workers are only a third as likely as those in the national workforce to be victims of homicide at work."[204] In the documentary Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal, it was argued that this number failed to factor out workers killed by external subjects rather than by fellow employees.

This series of events in turn has influenced American culture, as seen in the slang term "going postal"[205][206] (see Patrick Sherrill for information on his August 20, 1986, rampage) and the computer game Postal. Also, in the opening sequence of Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, a yell of "Disgruntled postal workers" is heard, followed by the arrival of postal workers with machine guns. In an episode of Seinfeld, the mailman character, Newman, explained in a dramatic monologue that postal workers "go crazy and kill everyone" because the mail never stops. In The Simpsons episode "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday," Nelson Muntz asks Postmaster Bill if he has "ever gone on a killing spree"; Bill replies, "The day of the gun-toting, disgruntled postman shooting up the place went out with the Macarena".[207]

The series of massacres led the US Postal Service to issue a rule prohibiting the possession of any type of firearms (except for those issued to Postal Inspectors) in all designated USPS facilities.[citation needed]

In 2016, video footage was released showing a group of police officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arresting a US Postal Service worker while he was in the middle of his deliveries. The footage showed that the officers were dressed in civilian clothing. The NYPD is reportedly investigating alleged disorderly conduct.[208]

In the film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), the identity of Kris Kringle (played by Edmund Gwenn) as the one and only "Santa Claus" was validated by a state court, based on the delivery of 21 bags of mail (famously carried into the courtroom) to the character in question. The contention was that it would have been illegal for the United States Post Office to deliver mail that was addressed to "Santa Claus" to the character "Kris Kringle" unless he were, in fact, the one and only Santa Claus. Judge Henry X. Harper (played by Gene Lockhart) ruled that since the US Government had demonstrated through the delivery of the bags of mail that Kris Kringle was Santa Claus, the State of New York did not have the authority to overrule that decision.

The novel Post Office (1971), written by poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, is a semi-autobiographical account of his life over the years as a mail carrier. Bukowski would, under duress, quit and years later return as a mail clerk. His personal account would detail the work at lengths as frustrating, menial, boring, and degrading.

The novel Waiting for the Earthquake (1977) by Lawrence Swaim is about the 1970 postal strike from the point of view of a young union official in a postal union. The Postal Inspectors plant an informer in his union, and the novel revolves around the fallout from this action, as well as the social chaos and racial tensions in American society in 1970.

In 2015, The Inspectors, which depicts a group of postal inspectors investigating postal crimes, debuted on CBS. The series uses the USPIS seal and features messages and tips from the Chief Postal Inspector at the end of each episode.

^Joseph M. Adelman, "'A Constitutional Conveyance of Intelligence, Public and Private': The Post Office, the Business of Printing, and the American Revolution," Enterprise & Society (2010) 11#4 pp 709–752. in Project MUSE

^DWTripp. "USPS mail changes - international surface mail going away". BoardGameGeek "Chit Chat" forum. Retrieved March 10, 2017. Internal newsletters detailed a huge loss for the USPS in the failed delivery of packages sent from the USA via surface. Since the USPS cannot dictate how scores of different countries handle surface mail, and since it's agreements required the USPS to take back undeliverable parcels, the losses were mounting.

Adelman, Joseph M. "'A Constitutional Conveyance of Intelligence, Public and Private': The Post Office, the Business of Printing, and the American Revolution," Enterprise & Society (2010) 11#4 pp 709–752. in Project MUSE

1.
List of United States Post Offices
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Post Offices include individual buildings, whether still in service or not, which have architectural or community-related significance. Many of these are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and/or state, United States Post Office United States Post Office Old Athens, Alabama Main Post Office in Athens, Alabama United States Post Office Auburn City Hall, formerly U. S. Post Office Robert S. Vance Federal Building and United States Courthouse, Birmingham, Alabama, formerly known as U. S. Johnson, cotter Federal Building, Hartford, Connecticut, NRHP-listed as U. S. S. S. Post Office, Gainesville, Florida, listed on the NRHP as U. S, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Michigan Lincoln Park Post Office, in Lincoln Park, MI, listed on the NRHP in Michigan Old U. S. Post Office, NRHP-listed Castle Museum, also known as Saginaw Post Office or Castle Station, Courthouse and Post Office, NRHP-listed United States Post Office-Amory, in Amory, Mississippi, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi U. S. Post Office, Courthouse, and Customhouse, NRHP-listed, in Harrison County United States Post Office, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi U. S. Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi U. S, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi Old U. S. S. Post Office, a Mississippi Landmark Old U. S, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi and as a Mississippi Landmark U. S. Post Office and Customhouse, Gulfport, Mississippi, NRHP-listed U. S, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Forrest County, Mississippi United States Post Office-Hazlehurst, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi Old U. S. Post Office, a Mississippi Landmark U. S, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi U. S. Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi United States Post Office-Magnolia, in Magnolia, Mississippi, Post Office, a Mississippi Landmark United States Post Office and Courthouse, NRHP-listed Old U. S. S. Post Office, a Mississippi Landmark U. S, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Mississippi U. S. Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Missouri United States Post Office-Kansas City, in Kansas City, MO, Post Office-Anaconda Main, in Anaconda, Montana, listed on the NRHP in Montana U. S. Post Office-Dillon Main, in Dillon, Montana, listed on the NRHP in Montana U. S, Post Office and Courthouse–Glasgow Main, Glasgow, Montana U. S. Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Montana U. S, Post Office and Courthouse–Great Falls U. S. Post Office and Courthouse–Havre Main, Havre, Montana U. S, Post Office and Federal Building-Lewistown, in Lewistown, Montana, listed on the NRHP in Montana U. S. Post Office-Livingston Main, in Livingston, Montana, listed on the NRHP in Montana Miles City Main Post Office, in Miles City, Montana, listed on the NRHP in Montana U. S. S. Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Nebraska United States Post Office-Minden, in Minden, Nebraska, Post Office, listed on the NRHP in Nebraska U. S. S. S

2.
United States Power Squadrons
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The USPS comprises approximately 45,000 members organized into 450 squadrons across the United States and in some US territories. It is the largest U. S. non-profit boating organization and has been honored by three U. S. presidents for its civic contributions and its official publication is The Ensign magazine. There are many opportunities available within the United States Power Squadrons. USPS offers courses that teach basic knowledge necessary to operate safely and legally. The basic course meets the requirements set forth by NASBLA, the United States Power Squadrons offer courses in advanced navigation using modern equipment such as GPS and Radar. Courses are even offered in celestial navigation, USPS also teaches advanced courses in Weather, Marine Engine Maintenance, Marine Electronic and Electrical Systems, Sail, and Cruise Planning. One critical activity of the United States Power Squadrons is Vessel Safety Check, a vessel safety check is provided at no charge and is not a law enforcement boarding. If the boat carries the equipment, a sticker will be awarded to display on the vessel. If a boat does not pass the inspection, the USPS informs the owners, a parallel organization operates in Canada under the name Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons in English and Escadrilles canadiennes de plaisance in French. It was founded as an offshoot of USPS in 1938, the USPS ensign features a red canton with 13 white stars around a fouled anchor. The body of the flag contains 13 vertical blue and white stripes and this flag was designed by Roger Upton and Charles F. Chapman for the United States Power Squadrons, and by 1915, the flag was officially adopted by the organization. The design and other specifications of this ensign are described in the USPS bylaws and also in the operations manual. com List of Squadron Websites

3.
Washington, D.C.
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Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D. C. is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16,1790, Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any state. The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, named in honor of President George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia, in 1871. Washington had an population of 681,170 as of July 2016. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. Washington is home to national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall. The city hosts 176 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of international organizations, trade unions, non-profit organizations, lobbying groups. A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973, However, the Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, the District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century, One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. 43, published January 23,1788, James Madison argued that the new government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance. Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia, known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital, on July 9,1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory, the port of Georgetown, Maryland, founded in 1751, many of the stones are still standing

4.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci

5.
L'Enfant Plaza
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LEnfant Plaza is a complex of four commercial buildings grouped around a large plaza in the Southwest section of Washington, D. C. Immediately below the plaza and the buildings is the La Promenade shopping mall, the plaza is located south of Independence Avenue SW between 12th and 9th Streets SW. It was built perpendicular to LEnfant Promenade, a north-south running street, the plaza is named for Pierre Charles LEnfant, the architect and planner who first designed a street layout for the capital city. It was dedicated in 1968 after completion of the north and south buildings, LEnfant Plaza was part of the Southwest D. C. urban renewal project, one of the earliest urban renewal projects in the U. S. and the first such in D. C. The rapid expansion of the population of Washington, D. C. during World War II led to the construction of suburban office buildings. Congress also gave the National Capital Planning Commission the authority to designate which land would be redeveloped, the RLA was not funded, however, until passage of the Housing Act of 1949. A1950 study by the NCPC found that the small Southwest quarter of the city suffered from high concentrations of old and poorly maintained buildings, overcrowding, and threats to public health. Competing visions for the redevelopment ranged from renovation to wholesale leveling of neighborhoods, demolition faced almost all structures in Southwest Washington and was to have begun in 1950, but legal challenges led to piecemeal razing of the area until the mid-1950s. Most of the dwellings in Southwest D. C. were Victorian row houses, in 1954, Southwest D. C. had about 3,900 buildings housing 4,500 families. About 60 percent of the residents were African American, and the remainder Caucasian, only 20 percent of the residents owned their own home, and 72 percent of the buildings were rated as substandard. The area which became LEnfant Plaza was primarily Victorian townhouses, although a shuttered slaughterhouse also stood in the area, the RLA was the first to propose a major plaza along 10th Street NW. It commissioned architects Robert Justement and Chloethiel Woodard Smith to devise a master plan for Southwest D. C. The Justement-Smith plan, released in 1952, called for wholesale clearance of the area, notably, the Justement-Smith plan also proposed building an esplanade above 10th Street SW which would connect with Maine Avenue SW. The RLA later said it had studied putting the mall anywhere from 5th Street to 12th Street, parks would border the esplanade east and west, with a goal of providing an unobstructed view of the Smithsonian Institution headquarters and the National Mall. In November 1952, the NCPC released a report supporting the Justement-Smith plan. The NCPC report also approved of the plan to build an esplanade above 10th Street SW, in 1953, the RLA asked developers to submit plans based on the NCPCs November 1952 compromise report. C. As originally laid out, a circle would be built on Independence Avenue SW in front of the Smithsonian Castle. A 400-foot wide, grass-lined pedestrian mall replaced 10th Street SW, a concert hall, convention center, and opera house would line the pedestrian mall, which would be built over the railroad tracks and Southeast Freeway and connect with the Potomac River waterfront

6.
Megan Brennan
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Megan Jane Brennan is the Postmaster General of the United States. The seventy-fourth postmaster general, Brennan became the first woman to hold the office when she assumed the position on February 1,2015. A native of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Brennan attended Nativity BVM High School there, after graduating in 1980, she attended Immaculata College near Philadelphia, graduating in 1984 with a B. A. in history. Brennan earned a MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2003, brennans late brother worked in their hometown Pottsville post office until he died in 2013. She began her career with the U. S. Postal Service in 1986 as a carrier in Lancaster. She subsequently worked as a delivery and collection supervisor, a plant manager in Reading and the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Brennan stepped away from the USPS for a year to study as a Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, following that hiatus, she served as manager of field support and integration and manager of operations support for the Northeast Area. In May 2005 she was named president for the Northeast Area. In December 2010, she was named operating officer and executive vice president of the USPS. In 2012, she began shutting down mail-handling facilities because of budget cuts brought on by less mail and Congressionally-mandated pension funding rules. On November 14,2014, the U. S. Postal Services Board of Governors voted to appoint Brennan postmaster general, to succeed Patrick R. Donahoe, Postal Service Board of Governors selects Megan Brennan as 74th Postmaster General and CEO of the United States Postal Service

7.
United States Postmaster General
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The Postmaster General of the United States is the chief executive officer of the United States Postal Service. The office, in one form or another, is older than both the United States Constitution and the United States Declaration of Independence, benjamin Franklin was appointed by the Continental Congress as the first Postmaster General in 1775, serving just over 15 months. Until 1971, the general was the head of the Post Office Department. From 1829 to 1971, he was a member of the Presidents Cabinet, the Cabinet post of Postmaster General was often given to a new Presidents campaign manager or other key political supporter, and was considered something of a sinecure. The Postmaster General was in charge of the partys patronage. In 1971, the Post Office Department was re-organized into the United States Postal Service, therefore, the Postmaster General is no longer a member of the Cabinet and is no longer in Presidential succession. The Postmaster General is the second-highest paid U. S. government official, based on publicly available salary information, as of July 2016, there are seven living former Postmasters General, the oldest being W. Marvin Watson. The most recent Postmaster General to die was Preston Robert Tisch, on November 15,2005

8.
United States Constitution
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The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. The Constitution, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government, Articles Four, Five and Six entrench concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments and of the states in relationship to the federal government. Article Seven establishes the procedure used by the thirteen States to ratify it. In general, the first ten amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, offer specific protections of individual liberty, the majority of the seventeen later amendments expand individual civil rights protections. Others address issues related to federal authority or modify government processes and procedures, Amendments to the United States Constitution, unlike ones made to many constitutions worldwide, are appended to the document. All four pages of the original U. S, according to the United States Senate, The Constitutions first three words—We the People—affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. From September 5,1774 to March 1,1781, the Continental Congress functioned as the government of the United States. The process of selecting the delegates for the First and Second Continental Congresses underscores the revolutionary role of the people of the colonies in establishing a governing body. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the first constitution of the United States and it was drafted by the Second Continental Congress from mid-1776 through late-1777, and ratification by all 13 states was completed by early 1781. Under the Articles of Confederation, the governments power was quite limited. The Confederation Congress could make decisions, but lacked enforcement powers, implementation of most decisions, including modifications to the Articles, required unanimous approval of all thirteen state legislatures. The Continental Congress could print money but the currency was worthless, Congress could borrow money, but couldnt pay it back. No state paid all their U. S. taxes, some paid nothing, some few paid an amount equal to interest on the national debt owed to their citizens, but no more. No interest was paid on debt owed foreign governments, by 1786, the United States would default on outstanding debts as their dates came due. Internationally, the Articles of Confederation did little to enhance the United States ability to defend its sovereignty, most of the troops in the 625-man United States Army were deployed facing – but not threatening – British forts on American soil. They had not been paid, some were deserting and others threatening mutiny, spain closed New Orleans to American commerce, U. S. officials protested, but to no effect. Barbary pirates began seizing American ships of commerce, the Treasury had no funds to pay their ransom, if any military crisis required action, the Congress had no credit or taxing power to finance a response. Domestically, the Articles of Confederation was failing to bring unity to the sentiments and interests of the various states

9.
Federal government of the United States
–
The Federal Government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a republic in North America, composed of 50 states, one district, Washington, D. C. and several territories. The federal government is composed of three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U. S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the courts, including the Supreme Court. The powers and duties of these branches are defined by acts of Congress. The full name of the republic is United States of America, no other name appears in the Constitution, and this is the name that appears on money, in treaties, and in legal cases to which it is a party. The terms Government of the United States of America or United States Government are often used in documents to represent the federal government as distinct from the states collectively. In casual conversation or writing, the term Federal Government is often used, the terms Federal and National in government agency or program names generally indicate affiliation with the federal government. Because the seat of government is in Washington, D. C, Washington is commonly used as a metonym for the federal government. The outline of the government of the United States is laid out in the Constitution, the government was formed in 1789, making the United States one of the worlds first, if not the first, modern national constitutional republics. The United States government is based on the principles of federalism and republicanism, some make the case for expansive federal powers while others argue for a more limited role for the central government in relation to individuals, the states or other recognized entities. For example, while the legislative has the power to create law, the President nominates judges to the nations highest judiciary authority, but those nominees must be approved by Congress. The Supreme Court, in its turn, has the power to invalidate as unconstitutional any law passed by the Congress and these and other examples are examined in more detail in the text below. The United States Congress is the branch of the federal government. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate, the House currently consists of 435 voting members, each of whom represents a congressional district. The number of each state has in the House is based on each states population as determined in the most recent United States Census. All 435 representatives serve a two-year term, each state receives a minimum of one representative in the House. There is no limit on the number of terms a representative may serve, in addition to the 435 voting members, there are six non-voting members, consisting of five delegates and one resident commissioner. In contrast, the Senate is made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population, there are currently 100 senators, who each serve six-year terms

10.
Mail
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The mail or post is a system for physically transporting documents and other small packages, or, the postcards, letters, and parcels themselves. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems, since the mid-19th century national postal systems have generally been established as government monopolies with a fee on the article prepaid. Proof of payment is often in the form of adhesive postage stamps, modern private postal systems are typically distinguished from national postal agencies by the names courier or delivery service. Postal authorities often have other than transporting letters. In some countries, a postal, telegraph and telephone service oversees the system, in addition to telephone. Some countries postal systems allow for savings accounts and handle applications for passports, the Universal Postal Union, established in 1874, includes 192 member countries and sets the rules for international mail exchanges. The word mail comes from the Medieval English word male, referring to a bag or pack. It was spelled that way until the 17th century, and is distinct from the word male, the French have a similar word, malle for a trunk or large box, and mála is the Irish term for a bag. In the 17th century, the mail began to appear as a reference for a bag that contained letters. Over the next hundred years the word began to be applied strictly to the letters themselves. The U. S. Postal Service delivers the mail, the term email first appeared in the 1970s. The term snail-mail is a retronym to distinguish it from the quicker email, various dates have been given for its first use. Post is derived from Medieval French poste, which stems from the past participle of the Latin verb ponere. The practice of communication by written documents carried by an intermediary from one person or place to another almost certainly dates back nearly to the invention of writing, however, development of formal postal systems occurred much later. The earliest surviving piece of mail is also Egyptian, dating to 255 BC, the first credible claim for the development of a real postal system comes from Ancient Persia, but the point of invention remains in question. He also negotiated with neighbouring countries to do the same and had built from the city of Post in Western Iran all the way up to the city of Hakha in the East. Other writers credit his successor Darius I of Persia, other sources claim much earlier dates for an Assyrian postal system, with credit given to Hammurabi and Sargon II. Mail may not have been the mission of this postal service

11.
Insular area
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An insular area is a territory of the United States of America that is neither a part of one of the fifty U. S. states nor the U. S. federal district of Washington, D. C. The term insular possession is sometimes used. The people of American Samoa are U. S. nationals by place of birth, or they are U. S. citizens by parentage, or naturalization after residing in a State for three months. Nationals are free to move around and seek employment within the United States without immigration restrictions but cannot vote or hold office outside of American Samoa. Residents of insular areas do not pay U. S. federal income taxes but are required to pay other U. S. federal taxes such as taxes, federal commodity taxes, social security taxes. Individuals working for the government pay federal income taxes while all residents are required to pay federal payroll taxes. While these nations participate in many otherwise domestic programs, they are distinct from the United States. U. S. insular areas can be incorporated territories or unincorporated territories, since the admission of Hawaii to the Union in 1959, there have been no incorporated territories other than the uninhabited Palmyra Atoll. Several overseas unincorporated territories are now independent countries including the Philippines, the Federated States of Micronesia, unlike within the states, sovereignty over insular areas rests not with the local people, but in Congress. In most areas, Congress has granted considerable self-rule through an Organic Act which functions as a local constitution, the Northwest Ordinance grants territories the right to send a non-voting delegate to the U. S. Congress. The United States government is part of international disputes over the disposition of certain maritime. See International territorial disputes of the United States, several islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific are considered insular areas of the United States. S. Administered the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations Trust Territory, later the U. S. entered into new political relationships with each of the four political units. One is the Northern Mariana Islands listed above, the others being the three freely associated states below. The freely associated states are the three states with a Compact of Free Association with the United States where the U. S. provides national defense, funding. Marshall Islands Federated States of Micronesia Palau Philippines, granted to U. S. through the Treaty of Paris in 1898, panama Canal Zone, under effective joint Panama-U. S. control under provisions of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty from 1903 to 1979. In November 2008 a district judge ruled that a sequence of prior Congressional actions had had the cumulative effect of changing Puerto Ricos status to incorporated. However, as of April 2011 the issue had not yet made its way through the courts, census Bureau, Geographic Areas Reference Manual

12.
Second Continental Congress
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The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the spring of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met between September 5,1774 and October 26,1774, also in Philadelphia, the second Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4,1776. When the Second Continental Congress came together on May 10,1775 it was, in effect, many of the same 56 delegates who attended the first meeting were in attendance at the second, and the delegates appointed the same president and secretary. Notable new arrivals included Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and John Hancock of Massachusetts, within two weeks, Randolph was summoned back to Virginia to preside over the House of Burgesses, he was replaced in the Virginia delegation by Thomas Jefferson, who arrived several weeks later. Henry Middleton was elected as president to replace Randolph, but he declined, Hancock was elected president on May 24. Delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies were present when the Second Continental Congress convened, Georgia had not participated in the First Continental Congress and did not initially send delegates to the Second Continental Congress. On May 13,1775, Lyman Hall was admitted as a delegate from the Parish of St. Johns in the Colony of Georgia, not as a delegate from the colony itself. The Second Continental Congress would meet on May 10,1775, by the time the Second Continental Congress met, the American Revolutionary War had already started with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Congress was to charge of the war effort. For the first few months of the struggle, the Patriots had carried on their struggle in an ad-hoc and they had seized arsenals, driven out royal officials, and besieged the British army in the city of Boston. On July 6,1775 Congress approved a Declaration of Causes outlining the rationale, on July 8, Congress extended the Olive Branch Petition to the British Crown as a final attempt at reconciliation. However, it was received too late to do any good, silas Deane was sent to France as a minister of the Congress. American ports were reopened in defiance of the British Navigation Acts, the Congress had no authority to levy taxes, and was required to request money, supplies, and troops from the states to support the war effort. Individual states frequently ignored these requests, Congress was moving towards declaring independence from the British Empire in 1776, but many delegates lacked the authority from their home governments to take such a drastic action. Advocates of independence in Congress moved to have reluctant colonial governments revise instructions to their delegations, on May 10,1776, Congress passed a resolution recommending that any colony lacking a proper government should form such. The resolution of independence was delayed for weeks as revolutionaries consolidated support for independence in their home governments. The records of the Continental Congress confirm that the need for a declaration of independence was intimately linked with the demands of international relations, on June 7,1776, Richard Henry Lee offered a resolution before the Continental Congress declaring the colonies independent. He also urged Congress to resolve to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances, Lee argued that independence was the only way to ensure a foreign alliance, since no European monarchs would deal with America if they remained Britains colonies

13.
Benjamin Franklin
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Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a polymath and a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman. As a scientist, he was a figure in the American Enlightenment. As an inventor, he is known for the rod, bifocals. He facilitated many civic organizations, including Philadelphias fire department and the University of Pennsylvania, Franklin earned the title of The First American for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation, in the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat. To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin the most accomplished American of his age, Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette at the age of 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richards Almanack, which he authored under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, after 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper that was known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the British policies. He pioneered and was first president of The Academy and College of Philadelphia which opened in 1751 and he organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected president in 1769. Franklin became a hero in America as an agent for several colonies when he spearheaded an effort in London to have the Parliament of Great Britain repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. His efforts proved vital for the American Revolution in securing shipments of crucial munitions from France, during the Revolution, he became the first US Postmaster General. He was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, from 1785 to 1788, he served as governor of Pennsylvania. He initially owned and dealt in slaves but, by the 1750s, he argued against slavery from an economic perspective, Franklins father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, a soap-maker and a candle-maker. Josiah was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England on December 23,1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith-farmer, and Jane White. His mother, Abiah Folger, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on August 15,1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrill, Josiah Franklin had seventeen children with his two wives. He married his first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton and emigrated with her to Boston in 1683, after her death, Josiah was married to Abiah Folger on July 9,1689 in the Old South Meeting House by Samuel Willard. Benjamin, their child, was Josiah Franklins fifteenth child and tenth

14.
United States Post Office Department
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The Post Office Department was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the Postmaster General, the Postal Service Act signed by President George Washington on February 20,1792, established the Department. Postmaster General John McLean, in office from 1823 to 1829, was the first to call it the Post Office Department rather than just the Post Office. The organization received a boost in prestige when President Andrew Jackson invited his Postmaster General, William T. Barry, the Post Office Act of 1872 elevated the Post Office Department to Cabinet status. The Postal Reorganization Act was signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12,1970 and it replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service on July 1,1971. The regulatory role of the services was then transferred to the Postal Regulatory Commission. Postage stamps and postal history of the United States

15.
Cabinet of the United States
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The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the government serving under the President. Aside from the Attorney General, the heads of the executive departments all receive the title of Secretary, all members of the Cabinet serve at the pleasure of the President, who can dismiss them at will for no cause. There is no definition of the term Cabinet in the United States Constitution. The name comes from a 17th-century usage for a room where advisors would meet. The term principal officers of the departments is also mentioned in the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The executive departments are listed in 5 U. S. C, under the 1967 Federal Anti-Nepotism statute, federal officials are prohibited from appointing their immediate family members to certain governmental positions, including those in the Cabinet. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, an incoming administration may appoint acting heads of department from employees of the relevant department and these may be existing high-level career employees, from political appointees of the outgoing administration, or sometimes lower-level appointees of the incoming administration. The heads of the departments and all other federal agency heads are nominated by the President. If approved, they receive their commission scroll, are sworn in, an elected Vice President does not require Senate confirmation, nor does the White House Chief of Staff, which is an appointed staff position of the Executive Office of the President. 21 positions, including the heads of the departments and others. §5312, and those 46 positions on Level II pay are listed in 5 U. S. C, as of 2015, Level I annual pay, was set at $203,700. The annual salary of the Vice President is $235,300, the salary level was set by the Government Salary Reform Act of 1989, which also provides an automatic cost of living adjustment for federal employees. For a full list of people nominated for Cabinet positions, see Formation of Donald Trumps Cabinet, the Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments, listed here according to their order of succession to the Presidency. The following officials hold positions that are considered to be Cabinet-level positions, Department of the Navy, headed by the Secretary of the Navy, became a military department within the Department of Defense. Post Office Department, headed by the Postmaster General, reorganized as the United States Postal Service, National Military Establishment, headed by the Secretary of Defense, created by the National Security Act of 1947 and recreated as the Department of Defense in 1949. Department of the Army, headed by the Secretary of the Army, Department of the Air Force, headed by the Secretary of the Air Force, became a military department within the Department of Defense. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, created in July 1781 and renamed Secretary of State in September 1789, Secretary of War, created in 1789 and was renamed as Secretary of the Army by the National Security Act of 1947. The 1949 Amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 made the Secretary of the Army a subordinate to the Secretary of Defense

16.
Vehicle fleet
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This page refers to a collection of vehicles with a single owner. For other uses of the fleet, see Fleet. Fleet vehicles are groups of vehicles owned or leased by a business. Typical examples are operated by car rental companies, taxicab companies, public utilities, public bus companies. In addition, many businesses purchase or lease fleet vehicles to deliver goods to customers, in the United States, Federal Vehicle fleets refers to the federal governments vehicles. Fleet leasing in the UK is very much the same as in the USA, Fleet leasing is popular with much larger businesses with the ability to get great deals and discounts on multi leasing vehicles. Carsharing Fleet card Fleet management software Fleet Management System Fleet Special General Services Administration Take-home vehicle Vehicle remarketing

17.
Letter box
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A letter box, letterbox, letter plate, letter hole, mail slot or mailbox is a receptacle for receiving incoming mail at a private residence or business. For the opposite purpose of collecting outgoing mail, a post box is used instead. This style is almost universal in British homes and offices, most are covered by a flap or seal on the outside for weatherproofing. The flap may be closed by gravity, or sprung to prevent it opening and closing noisily in the wind, some letterboxes also have a second flap on the inside to provide further protection from the elements. There may also be a cage or box mounted on the inside of the door to receive the delivered mail. Mail slots are limited to receiving incoming mail, as most have no provision for securing and protecting outgoing mail for pickup by the mail carrier, wall-mounted or attached mailboxes may also be used in place of mail slots, usually located close to the front door of the residence. They are known as full-service mailboxes when they have provisions for securing outgoing as well as incoming mail, attached wall-mounted mailboxes are still used in older urban and suburban neighbourhoods in North America. They are especially common in urban and suburban areas of Canada, attached mailboxes are less common in newer urban and suburban developments and in rural areas of the United States, where curbside delivery or delivery to a community mail station is generally used. Rural and some areas of North America may utilize curbside mailboxes. In the US and Canada, rural curbside mailboxes may be grouped together at property boundaries or road/driveway intersections. A number of designs of letterboxes and mailboxes have been patented, various privacy, theft-protection, vandalism resistance and corrosion-resistance test requirements This Standard is voluntary. Although the Standard was due for a review after 5 years in 2007, this did not happen. In April 2013 the amended Standard BS EN13724,2013 was finally published, however, the essential amendments were not included again and the interests of security, energy saving and wellbeing of the public were not addressed. Wall-mounted mailboxes equipped with a slot must have a slot opening measurement not less than 13.5 cm by 4 cm and the slot located on or near the top of the box. The signal device must rise above the mailbox and be visible at a distance, the US Post Office has established guidelines for mail recipients, including mail slot or mailbox size, location, and identification requirements. In 1978, seven years after the establishment of the restructured US Postal Service, currently, US curbside mailboxes are classified as Traditional, Contemporary, or Locking. Traditional or Contemporary non-locking curbside mailboxes are approved in three sizes - No,3, measured by minimum interior dimensions. The largest acceptable curbside mailbox is the No,3, which measures 22.81 inches long,11 inches wide, and 15 inches in height at the peak

18.
Package delivery
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Package delivery or parcel delivery is the delivery of shipping containers, parcels, or high value mail as single shipments. The service is provided by most postal systems, express mail, private delivery services. In 1852 Wells Fargo, then just one of such services, was formed to provide both banking and express services. These went hand-in-hand, as the handling of California gold and other financial matters required a method for transporting them across the country. This put Wells Fargo securely in the business and prompted them to participate in the Pony Express venture. From 1869 on, package services rapidly moved to rail, which was faster and cheaper, the express office was a universal feature of the staffed railroad station. Packages traveled as head end traffic in passenger trains, in 1918 the formation of the United States Railroad Administration resulted in a consolidation of all such services into a single agency, which after the war continued as the Railway Express Agency. This, along with Rural Free Delivery, fueled a rise in catalog sales. By this time the post office monopoly on mail was effectively enforced, motor freight services arose quickly with the advent of gasoline and diesel powered trucks. United Parcel Service had its origins in this era, initially as a courier service. The general improvement of the system following World War II prompted its expansion into a nationwide service. Eventually REA was dissolved in bankruptcy in 1975, air mail was conceived of early, and scheduled service began in 1918. Scheduled airlines carried high valued and perishable goods from early on, the most important advance, however, came with the hub and spoke system pioneered by Federal Express in 1973. With deregulation in 1977, they were able to establish a system capable of delivering small packages—including mail—overnight throughout most of the country. In response the postal service initiated a comparable Express Mail service, ironically, in the same period they also began contracting with Amtrak to carry mail by rail. Thus at the beginning of the 21st century, the U. S. consumer can choose from a variety of public and private services offering deliveries at various combinations of speed, same-day delivery for local parcels has long been available by local courier. Rail and air transport made same-day delivery feasible over longer distances, for example, retail goods were seldom sold with shipping any faster than overnight. Some online grocers such as AmazonFresh and Webvan, and delivery services operated by grocery stores like Peapod, many restaurants have long delivered takeout locally on demand, and online food ordering services have expanded this to many restaurants that would otherwise not deliver

19.
United Parcel Service
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United Parcel Service, Inc. is the worlds largest package delivery company and a provider of supply chain management solutions. The global logistics company is headquartered in the city of Sandy Springs, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages per day to more than 7.9 million customers in more than 220 countries and territories around the world. UPS is known for its trademark brown delivery trucks and uniforms, UPS also operates its own airline and air cargo delivery service based in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. On August 28,1907, James Casey founded the American Messenger Company with Claude Ryan in Seattle, Washington, most deliveries at this time were made on foot and bicycles were used for longer trips. The American Messenger Company focused primarily on package delivery to stores with special delivery mail delivered for its largest client the United States Postal Service. In 1913 the company acquired a Model T Ford as its first delivery vehicle, Casey and Ryan merged with a competitor, Evert McCabe, and formed Merchants Parcel Delivery. Consolidated delivery was introduced, combining packages addressed to a certain neighborhood onto one delivery vehicle. In 1916 Charlie Soderstrom joined Merchants Parcel Delivery bringing in more vehicles for the growing delivery business, in 1919 the company expanded for the first time outside of Seattle to Oakland, California and changed its name to United Parcel Service. Common carrier service was acquired in 1922 from a company in Los Angeles, UPS became one of the only companies in the United States to offer common carrier service. At first common carrier was only limited to an area around Los Angeles. In 1924 a conveyor system was debuted for the handling of packages for UPS operations. In 1930, a service began in New York City, and soon after in other major cities in the East. The use of common carrier for delivery between all customers placed UPS in direct competition with the United States Postal Service and the Interstate Commerce Commission. The common carrier service was applied to all cities in cities where UPS could use the service without the authority of the ICC, the first city for UPS to use common carrier outside of Los Angeles was Chicago, Illinois in 1953. Air service through UPS was first used in 1929 through private airlines, however, The Great Depression and a lack of volume ended the air service. In 1953 UPS resumed air service called UPS Blue Label Air with two-day service to cities along the East Coast and West Coast. In 1975, UPS moved its headquarters to Greenwich, Connecticut, the expanded operations to all 48 states made UPS the first package delivery company to serve every address in the Continental United States. UPS went international in 1975 establishing operations in Canada and in 1976 operations were established in Germany, on February 28, UPS Ltd. began operations in Toronto, Ontario

20.
FedEx
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FedEx Corporation is an American multinational courier delivery services company headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The name FedEx is an abbreviation of the name of the companys original air division, Federal Express. FedEx Corporation is a company, incorporated October 2,1997. FDX Corporation was founded in January 1998 with the acquisition of Caliber System Inc. by Federal Express, with the purchase of Caliber, FedEx started offering other services besides express shipping. FDX Corporation was founded to oversee all of the operations of companies and its original air division. Ron Ponder, a president at the time, was in charge of this proposed venture. In January 2000, FDX Corporation changed its name to FedEx Corporation, a new subsidiary, called FedEx Corporate Services, was formed to centralize the sales, marketing, and customer service for all of the subsidiaries. In February 2000, FedEx acquired Tower Group International, a logistics company. FedEx also acquired WorldTariff, a duty and tax information company, TowerGroup. FedEx Corp. acquired privately held Kinkos, Inc. in February 2004, the acquisition was made to expand FedExs retail access to the general public. After the acquisition, all FedEx Kinkos locations exclusively offered only FedEx shipping, in June 2008, FedEx announced that they would be dropping the Kinkos name from their ship centers, FedEx Kinkos would now be called FedEx Office. In September 2004, FedEx acquired Parcel Direct, a parcel consolidator, internal Revenue Service tentatively decided the FedEx Ground Division might be facing a tax liability of $319 million for 2002, due to misclassification of its operatives as independent contractors. FedEx denied that any irregularities in classification had occurred, but faced legal action from operatives claiming benefits that would have accrued had they been classified as employees. In June 2009, FedEx began a campaign against United Parcel Service, FedEx claimed that signing the Federal Aviation Administration re-authorization bill, which would let some of its workers unionize more easily, was equivalent to giving UPS a bailout. Independent observers heavily criticized FedExs wording, claiming that it was an abuse of the term, FedEx Express employees are regulated under the Railway Labor Act. On January 14,2013, FedEx named Henry Maier CEO and President of FedEx Ground, on July 17,2014, FedEx was indicted for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances in cooperation with the Chhabra-Smoley Organization and Superior Drugs. On July 17,2016 the The DOJ U. S. Attorneys Office confirmed in a statement that it had asked U. S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer to dismiss the indictment but also did not say why. In April 2015, FedEx acquired their rival firm TNT Express for €4.4 billion as it looks to expand their operations in Europe

21.
Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act
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The United States Postal Regulatory Commission, formerly called the Postal Rate Commission, is an independent regulatory agency created by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. Like the Postal Service, it was defined in law as an independent establishment of the executive branch, the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 created the PRC—originally named the Postal Rate Commission—to set the rates for different classes of mail by holding hearings on rates proposed by the USPS. From 1970 through 2006, the PRC also had authority over the USPS in areas besides rates changes. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 - H. R.6407 enacted on December 20,2006, one stipulation of the PAEA has caused controversy. This requirement also explicitly stated that the USPS was to stop using its savings to reduce postal debt and this is in addition to deductions from pay for federal contribution to social services. This pre-funding method is unique to the USPS, in June 2011, the USPS had to suspend its weekly payment of 115 million into the fund because it had reached 8 billion dollars in debt and the retirement plan had a surplus of 6.9 billion dollars. As with Postal Governors, PRC commissioners are permitted to serve for one additional year beyond the end of their term if a replacement has not been nominated and confirmed. The President designates one Commissioner as Chairman of the Commission, the Commissioners together designate one of their number as a Vice-Chairman for a one-year term. No more than three of the Commissioners can be any one political party. The current members are, Commissioners Langley and Hammond were confirmed by the Senate in December 2014, the PRC is organized into five operating offices, Accountability and Compliance, General Counsel, Public Affairs and Government Relations, Secretary, and Inspector General. Areas of expertise include economic and econometric analysis, analysis of characteristics of the postal system, analysis of Postal Service operating costs. OAC also collects, analyzes and periodically summarizes financial and various other information to support Commission responsibilities. PAGR engages in outreach, responds to media inquiries and disseminates information concerning Commission decisions. PAGR also provides information to customers and assists in the resolution of informal complaints, called rate and service inquiries. It also manages facilities and infrastructure, and provides support services, the Office of Inspector General also investigates allegations and complaints. The law requires that the Commission designate an individual to represent the interest of the public in every public proceeding. This obligation is likely unique in the government, although state-level public utility commissions have similar arrangements. Since 2007, the Commission has used the method of appointing a member, on a case-by-case basis

22.
U.S. Post Office Department
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The Post Office Department was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the Postmaster General, the Postal Service Act signed by President George Washington on February 20,1792, established the Department. Postmaster General John McLean, in office from 1823 to 1829, was the first to call it the Post Office Department rather than just the Post Office. The organization received a boost in prestige when President Andrew Jackson invited his Postmaster General, William T. Barry, the Post Office Act of 1872 elevated the Post Office Department to Cabinet status. The Postal Reorganization Act was signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12,1970 and it replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service on July 1,1971. The regulatory role of the services was then transferred to the Postal Regulatory Commission. Postage stamps and postal history of the United States

23.
Thirteen Colonies
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The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the east coast of North America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries that declared independence in 1776 and formed the United States. The Thirteen Colonies had very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems and they were part of Britains possessions in the New World, which also included colonies in present-day Canada and the Caribbean, as well as East and West Florida. However, the Thirteen Colonies had a degree of self-government and active local elections. In the 1750s, the colonies began collaborating with each other instead of dealing directly with Britain, Colonial decisions were subject to approval by the governor and the home government. There were also substantial populations of African slaves in some of the colonies, especially Virginia, the Carolinas, the names of the colonies were chosen by the founders and proprietors, subject to royal approval, and given in the founding charters. Nine of the thirteen chose to include in their names the term Province of, later residents tended to drop the ambiguous terminology, as in the map shown in the article Province of New Jersey, which is labeled simply East Jersey and West Jersey. In July 1776, they formed a new nation called the United States of America, the new nation achieved that goal by winning the American Revolutionary War with the aid of France, the Netherlands, and Spain. The American flag features thirteen horizontal stripes which represent these original thirteen colonies, besides these thirteen colonies, Britain had another dozen in the New World. Those in the British West Indies, Newfoundland, the Province of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Bermuda, and East and West Florida remained loyal to the crown throughout the war. The British crown had recently acquired those lands, and many of the issues facing the Thirteen Colonies did not apply to them, especially in the case of Quebec. Contemporary documents usually list the thirteen colonies of British North America in geographical order, the consolidation collapsed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, and the nine former colonies re-established their separate identities in 1689. Massachusetts Bay Colony Settled in 1630 by Puritans from England, the colonial charter was revoked in 1684, and a new charter was issued in 1691 establishing an enlarged Province of Massachusetts Bay. Province of Maine Settled in 1622, the Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed the Maine territory in the 1650s, then limited to present-day southernmost Maine. Parts of Maine east of the Kennebec River were also part of New York in the half of the 17th century. These areas were made part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the charter of 1691. Plymouth Colony Settled in 1620 by the Pilgrims, plymouth was merged into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the charter of 1691. Saybrook Colony Founded in 1635 and merged with Connecticut Colony in 1644, New Haven Colony Settled in late 1637. New Netherland Extensive region centered about New Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan Island

24.
Boston
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Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston is also the seat of Suffolk County, although the county government was disbanded on July 1,1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles with a population of 667,137 in 2015, making it the largest city in New England. Alternately, as a Combined Statistical Area, this wider commuting region is home to some 8.1 million people, One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon U. S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education, through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the original peninsula. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing over 20 million visitors per year, Bostons many firsts include the United States first public school, Boston Latin School, first subway system, the Tremont Street Subway, and first public park, Boston Common. Bostons economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, the city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings. Bostons early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine but later renamed it Boston after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the renaming on September 7,1630 was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest of fresh water. Their settlement was limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC, in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colonys first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history, over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America. Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century, Bostons harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Bostons merchants had found alternatives for their investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the economy, and the citys industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. Boston remained one of the nations largest manufacturing centers until the early 20th century, a network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a network of railroads furthered the regions industry. Boston was a port of the Atlantic triangular slave trade in the New England colonies

25.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange

26.
Letters patent
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Letters patent can be used for the creation of corporations or government offices, or for the granting of city status or a coat of arms. Letters patent are issued for the appointment of representatives of the Crown, such as governors and governors-general of Commonwealth realms, in the United Kingdom they are also issued for the creation of peers of the realm. A particular form of letters patent has evolved into the modern patent granting exclusive rights in an invention. e, the opposite of letters patent are letters close, which are personal in nature and sealed so that only the recipient can read their contents. Letters patent are thus comparable to other kinds of open letter in that their audience is wide, letters patent are so named from the Latin verb pateo, to lie open, exposed, accessible. The originators seal was attached pendent from the document, so that it did not have to be broken in order for the document to be read. Thus letters patent do not equate to a letter but rather to any form of document, deed, contract, letter, despatch, edict, decree. Letters patent are a form of open or public proclamation and an exercise of extra-parliamentary power by a monarch or president. Prior to the establishment of Parliament, the monarch ruled absolutely by the issuing of his written orders. They can thus be contrasted with the Act of Parliament, which is in effect an order by Parliament. No explicit government approval is contained within letters patent, only the seal or signature of the monarch, in their original form they were simply written instructions or orders from the sovereign, whose order was law, which were made public to reinforce their effect. According to the United Kingdom Ministry of Justice, there are 92 different types of letters patent. The Patent Rolls are made up of copies of English royal letters patent. In 1634, during the Thirty Years War, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II became convinced that his general Albrecht von Wallenstein was plotting treason, on 24 January 1634 the Emperor signed a secret patent removing him from his command. Finally an open patent, charging Wallenstein with high treason, was signed on 18 February, in the patent, Ferdinand II ordered to have Wallenstein brought under arrest to Vienna, dead or alive. On the basis of patent, several of Wallensteins officers assassinated him and were rewarded by the Emperor. The form of patent for creating peerages has been fixed by the Crown Office Order 1992. Part III of the schedule lays down nine pro forma texts for creating various ranks of the peerage, lords of appeal in ordinary, gender-specific differences are highlighted in italics. In Commonwealth realms, letters patent are issued under the powers of the head of state

27.
William III of England
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It is a coincidence that his regnal number was the same for both Orange and England. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II and he is informally known by sections of the population in Northern Ireland and Scotland as King Billy. William inherited the principality of Orange from his father, William II and his mother Mary, Princess Royal, was the daughter of King Charles I of England. In 1677, he married his fifteen-year-old first cousin, Mary, a Protestant, William participated in several wars against the powerful Catholic king of France, Louis XIV, in coalition with Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Many Protestants heralded him as a champion of their faith, in 1685, his Catholic father-in-law, James, Duke of York, became king of England, Ireland and Scotland. Jamess reign was unpopular with the Protestant majority in Britain, William, supported by a group of influential British political and religious leaders, invaded England in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. On 5 November 1688, he landed at the southern English port of Brixham, James was deposed and William and Mary became joint sovereigns in his place. They reigned together until her death on 28 December 1694, after which William ruled as sole monarch, Williams reputation as a staunch Protestant enabled him to take the British crowns when many were fearful of a revival of Catholicism under James. Williams victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 is still commemorated by the Orange Order and his reign in Britain marked the beginning of the transition from the personal rule of the Stuarts to the more Parliament-centred rule of the House of Hanover. William III was born in The Hague in the Dutch Republic on 4 November 1650, baptised William Henry, he was the only child of stadtholder William II, Prince of Orange, and Mary, Princess Royal. Mary was the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, eight days before William was born, his father died of smallpox, thus William was the Sovereign Prince of Orange from the moment of his birth. Immediately, a conflict ensued between his mother the Princess Royal and William IIs mother, Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, over the name to be given to the infant. Mary wanted to name him Charles after her brother, but her mother-in-law insisted on giving him the name William or Willem to bolster his prospects of becoming stadtholder. William II had appointed his wife as his sons guardian in his will, however, Williams mother showed little personal interest in her son, sometimes being absent for years, and had always deliberately kept herself apart from Dutch society. Williams education was first laid in the hands of several Dutch governesses, some of English descent, including Walburg Howard, from April 1656, the prince received daily instruction in the Reformed religion from the Calvinist preacher Cornelis Trigland, a follower of the Contra-Remonstrant theologian Gisbertus Voetius. The ideal education for William was described in Discours sur la nourriture de S. H. Monseigneur le Prince dOrange, in these lessons, the prince was taught that he was predestined to become an instrument of Divine Providence, fulfilling the historical destiny of the House of Orange. From early 1659, William spent seven years at the University of Leiden for a formal education, under the guidance of ethics professor Hendrik Bornius. While residing in the Prinsenhof at Delft, William had a personal retinue including Hans Willem Bentinck, and a new governor, Frederick Nassau de Zuylenstein

28.
Mary II of England
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Mary II was joint monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland with her husband and first cousin, William of Orange, from 1689 until her death. William became sole ruler upon her death in 1694, popular histories usually refer to their joint reign as that of William and Mary. Mary wielded less power than William when he was in England, ceding most of her authority to him and she did, however, act alone when William was engaged in military campaigns abroad, proving herself to be a powerful, firm, and effective ruler. Mary, born at St Jamess Palace in London on 30 April 1662, was the eldest daughter of James, Duke of York, and his first wife, Anne Hyde. She was baptised into the Anglican faith in the Chapel Royal at St Jamess and her godparents included her fathers cousin, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Although her mother bore eight children, all except Mary and her younger sister Anne died very young, consequently, for most of her childhood, Mary was second in line to the throne after her father. The Duke of York converted to Roman Catholicism in 1668 or 1669, Marys education, from private tutors, was largely restricted to music, dance, drawing, French, and religious instruction. Her mother died in 1671, and her father remarried in 1673, taking as his second wife Mary of Modena, from about the age of nine until her marriage, Mary wrote passionate letters to an older girl, Frances Apsley, the daughter of courtier Sir Allen Apsley. In time, Frances became uncomfortable with the correspondence, and replied more formally, at the age of fifteen, Mary became betrothed to her cousin, the Protestant Stadtholder of Holland, William of Orange. William was the son of the Kings late sister, Mary, Princess Royal, and thus fourth in the line of succession after James, Mary, and Anne. The Duke of York agreed to the marriage, after pressure from chief minister Lord Danby and the King, when James told Mary that she was to marry her cousin, she wept all that afternoon and all the following day. William and a tearful Mary were married in St Jamess Palace by Bishop Henry Compton on 4 November 1677, Mary accompanied her husband on a rough sea crossing back to the Netherlands later that month, after a delay of two weeks caused by bad weather. On 14 December, they made an entry to The Hague in a grand procession. Marys animated and personable nature made her popular with the Dutch people and she was devoted to her husband, but he was often away on campaigns, which led to Marys family supposing him to be cold and neglectful. She suffered further bouts of illness that may have been miscarriages in mid-1678, early 1679 and her childlessness would be the greatest source of unhappiness in her life. From May 1684, the Kings illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, lived in the Netherlands, Monmouth was viewed as a rival to the Duke of York, and as a potential Protestant heir who could supplant James in the line of succession. William, however, did not consider him a viable alternative, upon the death of Charles II without legitimate issue in February 1685, the Duke of York became king as James II in England and Ireland and James VII in Scotland. Mary was playing cards when her husband informed her of her fathers accession, to Williams relief, Monmouth was defeated, captured and executed, but both he and Mary were dismayed by Jamess subsequent actions

29.
Massachusetts
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It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York to the west. The state is named for the Massachusett tribe, which inhabited the area. The capital of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England is Boston, over 80% of Massachusetts population lives in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, a region influential upon American history, academia, and industry. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing and trade, Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution, during the 20th century, Massachusetts economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Modern Massachusetts is a leader in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance. Plymouth was the site of the first colony in New England, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, in 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of Americas most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials. In 1777, General Henry Knox founded the Springfield Armory, which during the Industrial Revolution catalyzed numerous important technological advances, in 1786, Shays Rebellion, a populist revolt led by disaffected American Revolutionary War veterans, influenced the United States Constitutional Convention. In the 18th century, the Protestant First Great Awakening, which swept the Atlantic World, in the late 18th century, Boston became known as the Cradle of Liberty for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution. The entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts has played a commercial and cultural role in the history of the United States. Before the American Civil War, Massachusetts was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, in the late 19th century, the sports of basketball and volleyball were invented in the western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke, respectively. Many prominent American political dynasties have hailed from the state, including the Adams, both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also in Cambridge, have been ranked among the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world. Massachusetts public school students place among the top nations in the world in academic performance, the official name of the state is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While this designation is part of the official name, it has no practical implications. Massachusetts has the position and powers within the United States as other states. Massachusetts was originally inhabited by tribes of the Algonquian language family such as the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, Mahican, and Massachusett. While cultivation of crops like squash and corn supplemented their diets, villages consisted of lodges called wigwams as well as longhouses, and tribes were led by male or female elders known as sachems. Between 1617 and 1619, smallpox killed approximately 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans, the first English settlers in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, arrived via the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, and developed friendly relations with the native Wampanoag people. This was the second successful permanent English colony in the part of North America that later became the United States, the event known as the First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World which lasted for three days

30.
Post office
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A post office is a customer service facility forming part of a national postal system. Post offices offer mail-related services such as acceptance of letters and parcels, provision of post office boxes, and sale of stamps, packaging. In addition, many post offices offer services, providing and accepting government forms, processing government services and fees. The chief administrator of a post office is a postmaster, prior to the advent of postal and ZIP codes, postal systems would route items to a specific post office for receipt or delivery. The term post office or post-office has been in use since the 1650s, in early Modern England, post riders – mounted couriers – were placed every few hours along post roads at posting houses or post houses between major cities. These stables or inns permitted important correspondence to travel without delay, in early America, post offices were also known as stations. This term and post house fell from use as horse and coach service was replaced by railways, aircraft, today, post office usually refers to postal facilities providing customer service. The term General Post Office is sometimes used for the headquarters of a postal service. A postal facility that is used exclusively for processing mail is known as sorting office or delivery office. Integrated facilities combining mail processing with railway stations or airports are known as mail exchanges, there is evidence of corps of royal couriers disseminating the decrees of the Egyptian pharaohs as early as 2,400 BC and the service may greatly precede even that date. Similarly, organized systems of posthouses providing swift mounted courier service seems quite ancient, certainly, by the time of the Persian Empire, a system of Chapar-Khaneh existed along the Royal Road. The 2nd-Century BC Mauryan and Han dynasties established similar systems in India, suetonius credited Augustus with regularizing the Roman network, the cursus publicus. Local officials were obliged to provide couriers who would be responsible for their messages entire course, locally maintained post houses privately owned rest houses were obliged or honored to care for them along their way. Diocletian later established two parallel systems, one providing fresh horses or mules for urgent correspondence and another providing sturdy oxen for bulk shipments, procopius, though not unbiased, records that this system remained largely intact was dismantled in the surviving empire by Justinian in the 6th Century. The Princely House of Thurn and Taxis initiated regular mail service from Brussels in the 16th century, the British Postal Museum claims that the oldest functioning post office in the world is on High Street in Sanquhar, Scotland. This post office has functioned continuously since 1712, an era in which horses, in parts of Europe, special postal censorship offices existed to intercept and censor mail. In France, such offices were known as cabinets noirs, in many jurisdictions, mail boxes and post office boxes have long been in widespread use for dropoff and pickup of mail and small packages outside of post offices or when offices are closed. Deutsche Post introduced the Packstation for package delivery in 2001, in the 2000s, the United States Postal Service began to install Automated Postal Centers in many locations both in post offices and in retail locations

31.
Post road
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A post road is a road designated for the transportation of postal mail. In various centuries and countries, post road became more or less equivalent to main road, royal road, the 20th century spread of postal service blurred the distinction. In what was to become the United States, post roads developed as the primary method of communicating information across. The Articles of Confederation authorized the government to create post offices. Constitution changed this, as Article I, Section Eight, known as the Postal Clause, specifically authorizes Congress the enumerated power to establish post offices and this was generally interpreted liberally, to include all public highways. U. S. Supreme Court justice Joseph Story defended the broad interpretation that had become dominant in his influential Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, a law of 1838 designated all existing and future railroads as post roads. Route 22 in its form was established in 1930 as one of the principal routes from New York City to Canada. Chemin du Roy was built between Montreal and Quebec City from 1731 to 1737, for mail and as a means of travel for the key settlements in New France/Lower Canada and it was later incorporated as Quebec Route 2 and is now part of Quebec Route 138. Two notable post roads built in the late 1700s and early 1800s were Dundas Road and Kingston Road to provide a route of mail and stagecoaches between key settlements in Upper Canada. The latter route, which became The Provincial Highway in 1917, great Post Road, from Anyer to Panarukan, Indonesia, which was built during the governancy of Herman Willem Daendels of Dutch East Indies from 1808 to 1811. Antwerp-Venice Post Road, similar to the Dutch Post Road, bremen-Hamburg Post Road, approved by the king of Sweden on July 5,1665 to establish regular mail service. A second route was routed from Cuxhaven through the Land of Wursten to Lehe, Dutch Post Road, established in 1490, connected the Netherlands with coaching inns in Germany and Italy. Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,3 vols

32.
Rufus Easton
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Rufus Easton was an American attorney, politician, and postmaster. He served as a delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the Missouri Territory prior to statehood. After statehood he became Missouris second Attorney General, Rufus Easton was the founder of Alton, Illinois, and father of womens education pioneer Mary Easton Sibley. Rufus Easton was born on May 4,1774 in Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut to parents Joseph, after studying Law under Ephraim Kirby in his native Litchfield County, Easton moved to Rome, New York and established a law practice. Easton and wife Alby, who he had married in 1799, left New York in 1803 settling briefly in Vincennes, Indiana Territory. In Vincennes he became friends with Edward Hempstead and John Scott, joining them in William Henry Harrisons expedition set up a government in St. Louis. Easton purchased land just east of the Mississippi River in 1815 where he established a town and he named the town in honor of his firstborn son, Alton Rufus Easton. Alton is at the juncture of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and is near where Lewis, aside from the town name, the Easton family is memorialized in Rufus Easton Street and streets named after Easton children, including Alby, Henry, George, and Langdon. Unfortunately, Easton was not prosperous in Alton and speculation there left him in financial straits for the remainder of his life, just a year after arriving in St. Louis, Rufus Easton received two federal appointments from President Thomas Jefferson. His reputation for work in New York preceding him, Easton was appointed a Territorial Judge for the United States territorial court. Additionally he was appointed the first Postmaster of St. Louis in 1805 and it was a time of political intrigue in the western United States and new territories with several prominent men implicated in the Burr Conspiracy. While Easton did exchange correspondence with Aaron Burr during that period, primarily regarding the actions of James Wilkinson. Burr had become acquainted with Easton a few years previous and helped arrange his appointment as a judge, when Burr visited St. Louis in July,1805 he met with Easton and revealed to him some details of his plot, asking him to join. Easton refused and broke off all contact with Burr. Shortly thereafter Easton wrote to President Jefferson informing him of Burrs plot, in retaliation for Eastons repudiation, Wilkinson, a key Burr conspirator, began a campaign to have Easton removed from the court by leveling charges of official misconduct and fraud. Rufus Easton was acquitted and even traveled to Washington D. C. to meet with Jefferson and it was for naught, as the President removed Easton from his judicial post in February,1806. Several months later however, Jefferson attempted to set right the removal by appointing Easton as U. S. Attorney for the territory, stung by the assault on his honor over the conspiracy and his removal as judge, Rufus Easton seriously considered challenging Aaron Burr to a duel. Postmaster General Gideon Granger wrote Easton in December,1806 convincing him not to pursue the matter, Burr of course was experienced in such affairs of honor, having killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel

33.
Thomas Jefferson
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Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Previously, he was elected the second Vice President of the United States, Jefferson was primarily of English ancestry, born and educated in colonial Virginia. He graduated from the College of William & Mary and briefly practiced law and he became the United States Minister to France in May 1785, and subsequently the nations first Secretary of State in 1790–1793 under President George Washington. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System, as President, Jefferson pursued the nations shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. He also organized the Louisiana Purchase, almost doubling the countrys territory, as a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. Jeffersons second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr, American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding to British threats to U. S. shipping. In 1803, Jefferson began a process of Indian tribe removal to the newly organized Louisiana Territory. Jefferson mastered many disciplines, which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and he was a proven architect in the classical tradition. Jeffersons keen interest in religion and philosophy earned him the presidency of the American Philosophical Society and he shunned organized religion, but was influenced by both Christianity and deism. He was well versed in linguistics and spoke several languages and he founded the University of Virginia after retiring from public office. He was a letter writer and corresponded with many prominent and important people throughout his adult life. His only full-length book is Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson owned several plantations which were worked by hundreds of slaves. Most historians now believe that, after the death of his wife in 1782, he had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least one of her children. Various modern scholars are more critical of Jeffersons private life, pointing out the discrepancy between his ownership of slaves and his political principles, for example. Presidential scholars, however, consistently rank Jefferson among the greatest presidents, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13,1743, at the family home in Shadwell in the Colony of Virginia, the third of ten children. He was of English and possibly Welsh descent and was born a British subject and his father Peter Jefferson was a planter and surveyor who died when Jefferson was fourteen, his mother was Jane Randolph. Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 upon the death of a friend who had named him guardian of his children, the Jeffersons returned to Shadwell in 1752, where Peter died in 1757, his estate was divided between his sons Thomas and Randolph. Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres of land, including Monticello and he assumed full authority over his property at age 21

34.
Gideon Granger
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Gideon Granger was an early American politician and lawyer. He was the father of Francis Granger, born in Suffield, Connecticut, Granger attended and graduated from Yale University and became a lawyer. He was considered a brilliant political essayist, using the pseudonyms Algernon Sydney and Epaminondas many of his writings, defending Jeffersonian principles, were published in many pamphlets. He was a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives and ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress in 1798, a staunch supporter of Thomas Jeffersons, Granger was appointed as Postmaster General at the start of his term in 1801. He served in this post until 1814 when Jeffersons successor, James Madison and he is the longest serving Postmaster General as of 2015. Granger settled in Canandaigua, New York, where he built a homestead that would be unrivaled in all the nation from which he could administer the many land tracts he had acquired further to the west, today his home is a museum. He became a member of the New York Senate and continued to be influential in politics, ill health forced him to retire early in 1821 and he died the next year on December 31,1822. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in Canandaigua, Granger is the namesake of Granger Township, Ohio. Granger Homestead and Carriage Museum Gideon Granger at Find a Grave

35.
Louisiana Territory
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Louisiana Territory was formed out of the Indiana Territory-administered District of Louisiana, which consisted of all Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 33rd parallel. The 33rd parallel now forms the border of Arkansas and the northern border of Louisiana. This act, which went into effect on October 1,1804, expanded the authority of the governor, on March 3,1805, Congress enacted legislation organizing the District of Louisiana into the Louisiana Territory, effective July 4,1805. The Territory was governed similarly to Indiana Territory, the Louisiana Territory included everything in the Louisiana Purchase north of the 33rd parallel. The southern and western boundaries with Spanish Texas and New Mexico were not fully defined until the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, the Louisiana Territory had five subdivisions, St. Louis District, St. Charles District, Ste. Genevieve District, Cape Girardeau District, and New Madrid District, in 1806, the territorial legislature created the District of Arkansas from lands ceded by the Osage Nation. The remainder was known as the Upper Louisiana Territory, the seat of government was in the town of St. Louis. The first territorial governor was James Wilkinson, appointed by President Jefferson, meriwether Lewis and William Clark served as the second and third Louisiana Territory governors, respectively. On June 4,1812, the Twelfth U. S. Congress enacted legislation which renamed Louisiana Territory as Missouri Territory, territories that would later become part of the Territory of Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, 1803–1804 District of Louisiana, 1804–1805 U. S. S

36.
Aaron Burr
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Aaron Burr Jr. was an American politician. He was the vice president of the United States, serving during President Thomas Jeffersons first term. Burr served as a Continental Army officer in the Revolutionary War, after which he became a successful lawyer, the highlight of Burrs tenure as president of the senate was the Senates first impeachment trial, that of Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase. In 1804, the last full year of his term as vice president. Burr was never tried for the duel, and all charges against him were eventually dropped. After leaving Washington, Burr traveled west seeking new opportunities, both economic and political and his activities eventually led to his arrest on charges of treason in 1807. The subsequent trial resulted in acquittal, but Burrs western schemes left him with large debts, in a final quest for grand opportunities, he left the United States for Europe. He remained overseas until 1812, when he returned to the United States to practice law in New York City, there he spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity. Aaron Burr Jr. was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1756 as the child of the Reverend Aaron Burr Sr. a Presbyterian minister. His mother Esther Burr was the daughter of Jonathan Edwards, the noted Calvinist theologian, Burr had an older sister Sarah, named for her maternal grandmother. She later married Tapping Reeve, founder of the Litchfield Law School in Litchfield, Burrs father died in 1757, and his mother the following year, leaving him and his sister orphans when he was two years old. He and his sister first lived with their grandparents, but Sarah Edwards also died in 1757. Young Aaron and Sally were placed with the William Shippen family in Philadelphia, in 1759, the childrens guardianship was assumed by their 21-year-old maternal uncle Timothy Edwards. The next year, Edwards married Rhoda Ogden and moved with the children to Elizabeth, New Jersey, rhodas younger brothers Aaron Ogden and Matthias Ogden became the boys playmates. The three boys, along with their neighbor Jonathan Dayton, formed a group of friends that lasted their lifetimes, Aaron Burr was admitted to the sophomore class of the College of New Jersey at the age of 13, after being rejected once at age 11. Aside from being occupied with studies, he was a part of the American Whig Society and Cliosophic Society. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1772 at age 16 and he studied theology for an additional year, before rigorous theological training with Joseph Bellamy, a Presbyterian. He changed his career two years later, at age 19, when he moved to Connecticut to study law with his brother-in-law Tapping Reeve

37.
Alexander Hamilton
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Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration. He took the lead in the funding of the debts by the Federal government, as well as the establishment of a national bank, a system of tariffs. His vision included a central government led by a vigorous executive branch. This was challenged by Virginia agrarians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who formed a rival party and they favored strong states based in rural America and protected by state militias as opposed to a strong national army and navy. They denounced Hamilton as too friendly toward Britain and toward monarchy in general, Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Charlestown, to a married mother of British and French Huguenot ancestry and a Scottish father. His father, James A. Hamilton, was the son of laird Alexander Hamilton of Grange. Orphaned as a child by his mothers death and his fathers abandonment, Hamilton was taken in by an older cousin and he was recognized for his intelligence and talent, and sponsored by a group of wealthy local men to travel to New York City to pursue his education. Hamilton attended Kings College, choosing to stay in the Thirteen Colonies to seek his fortune, discontinuing his studies before graduating when the college closed its doors during British occupation of the city, Hamilton played a major role in the American Revolutionary War. At the start of the war in 1775, he joined a militia company, in early 1776, he raised a provincial artillery company, to which he was appointed captain. He soon became the aide to General Washington, the American forces commander-in-chief. Hamilton was dispatched by Washington on numerous missions to convey plans to his generals, after the war, Hamilton was elected as a representative to the Congress of the Confederation from New York. He resigned to practice law, and founded the Bank of New York, Hamilton was among those dissatisfied with the weak national government. He led the Annapolis Convention, which successfully influenced Congress to issue a call for the Philadelphia Convention in order to create a new constitution, Hamilton became the leading cabinet member in the new government under President Washington. These programs were funded primarily by a tariff on imports, to overcome localism, Hamilton mobilized a nationwide network of friends of the government, especially bankers and businessmen, which became the Federalist Party. A major issue in the emergence of the American two-party system was the Jay Treaty and it established friendly trade relations with Britain, to the chagrin of France and the supporters of the French Revolution. Hamilton played a role in the Federalist party, which dominated national. In 1795, he returned to the practice of law in New York and he tried to control the policies of President Adams

38.
Spoke-hub distribution paradigm
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The spoke-hub distribution paradigm is a system of connections arranged like a wire wheel in which all traffic moves along spokes connected to the hub at the center. The model is used in industry, particularly in transport, telecommunications, freight. The hub-and-spoke model is most frequently compared to the point-to-point transit model, for a network of n nodes, only n -1 routes are necessary to connect all nodes so the upper bound is n -1, and the complexity is O. That compares favorably to the n 2 routes, or O, for example, in a system with 10 destinations, the spoke-hub system requires only 9 routes to connect all destinations, and a true point-to-point system would require 45 routes. The small number of routes may lead to efficient use of transportation resources. For example, aircraft are likely to fly at full capacity. Complicated operations, such as package sorting and accounting, can be carried out at the hub rather than at every node, spokes are simple and so new ones can easily be created. Because the model is centralized, day-to-day operations may be relatively inflexible and it may be difficult or even impossible to handle occasional periods of high demand between two spokes. Route scheduling is complicated for the network operator, scarce resources must be used carefully to avoid starving the hub. Careful traffic analysis and precise timing are required to keep the hub operating efficiently, the hub constitutes a bottleneck or single point of failure in the network. The total cargo capacity of the network is limited by the hubs capacity, delays at the hub can result in delays throughout the network. Cargo must pass through the hub before reaching its destination and so require longer journeys than direct point-to-point trips and that may be desirable for freight, which can benefit from sorting and consolidating operations at the hub, but it is problematic for time-critical cargo as well as for passengers. Two trips are required to reach most destinations, the distance traveled may thus be several times longer compared to a direct trip between departure and destination points. The time spent at the hub increases the duration of the journey, moreover, missing the connecting bus, flight, or train may be more troublesome than just a delay. In 1955, Delta Air Lines pioneered the hub and spoke system at its hub in Atlanta, Georgia, in the mid-1970s FedEx adopted the hub and spoke model for overnight package delivery. After the airline industry was deregulated in 1978, Deltas hub, airlines have extended the hub-and-spoke model in various ways. One method is to create additional hubs on a regional basis and that reduces the need to travel long distances between nodes near one another. Another method is to use focus cities to implement point-to-point service for high-traffic routes, freight rail transport in which cargo is hauled to a central exchange terminal

39.
Railway Post Office
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The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the train. In the UK, the equivalent term was Travelling Post Office, from the middle of the 19th century, many American railroads earned substantial revenues through contracts with the U. S. Post Office Department to carry mail aboard high-speed passenger trains, in fact, a number of companies maintained passenger routes where the financial losses from moving people were more than offset by transporting the mail. The worlds first official carriage of mail by rail was by the United Kingdoms General Post Office in November 1830, using adapted railway carriages on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. In the United States, some references suggest that the first shipment of mail carried on a train occurred in 1831 on the South Carolina Rail Road. Other sources state that the first official contract to carry mail on a train was made with the Baltimore. The United States Congress officially designated all railroads as official postal routes on July 7,1838, similar services were introduced on Canadian railroads in 1859. The Railway post office was introduced in the United States on July 28,1862, using converted baggage cars on the Hannibal, purpose-built Railway Post Office cars entered service on this line a few weeks after the service was initiated. Their purpose was to separate mail for connection with a westbound stagecoach departing soon after the arrival at St. Joseph. This service lasted approximately one year, the first permanent Railway Post Office route was established on August 28,1864, between Chicago, Illinois, and Clinton, Iowa. This service is distinguished from the 1862 operation because mail was sorted to and received from each post office along the route, as well as major post offices beyond the routes end-points. Armstrong, assistant postmaster at Chicago, originally came up with the idea of having mail processed and distributed while the mail was on board, en route in mail cars. With the assistance of Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House at the time, in 1869, the Railway Mail Service, headed by George B. Armstrong, was inaugurated to handle the transportation and sorting of mail aboard trains. Armstrong was promoted from a position in the Chicago post office following his experiments in 1864 with a converted route agents car on runs between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa. RPO car interiors, which at first consisted of wood furniture and fixtures. In 1879, an RMS employee named Charles R. Harrison developed a new set of fixtures that soon gained widespread use. Harrisons design consisted of hinged, cast-iron fixtures that could be unfolded and set up in a number of configurations to hold mail pouches, racks and a sorting table as needed for specific routes

40.
American frontier
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Frontier refers to a contrasting region at the edge of a European-American line of settlement. American historians cover multiple frontiers but the folklore is focused primarily on the 19th century west of the Mississippi River. As defined by Hine and Faragher, frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states. They explain, It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, thus, Turners Frontier Thesis proclaimed the westward frontier as the defining process of American history. As the American frontier passed into history, the myths of the West in fiction and film took firm hold in the imagination of Americans, America is exceptional in choosing its iconic self-image. David Murdoch has said, No other nation has taken a time and place from its past, the frontier line was the outer line of European-American settlement. It moved steadily westward from the 1630s to the 1880s, Turner favored the Census Bureau definition of the frontier line as a settlement density of two people per square mile. The West was the settled area near that boundary. Thus, parts of the Midwest and American South, though no longer considered western, have a frontier heritage along with the western states. In the 21st century, however, the term American West is most often used for the area west of the Mississippi River, in the colonial era, before 1776, the west was of high priority for settlers and politicians. The American frontier began when Jamestown, Virginia was settled by the English in 1607, English, French, Spanish and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were quite different. Although French fur traders ranged widely through the Great Lakes and mid-west region they settled down. French settlement was limited to a few small villages such as Kaskaskia. They created a rural settlement in upstate New York. Areas in the north that were in the stage by 1700 generally had poor transportation facilities. The wealthy speculator, if one was involved, usually remained at home, the class of landless poor was small. Few artisans settled on the frontier except for those who practiced a trade to supplement their primary occupation of farming, there might be a storekeeper, a minister, and perhaps a doctor, and there were a number of landless laborers. However frontier areas of 1700 that had good river connections were transformed into plantation agriculture

41.
Andrew Jackson
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Andrew Jackson was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 and was the founder of the Democratic Party. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson served in Congress, as president, Jackson sought to advance the rights of the common man against what he saw as a corrupt aristocracy and to preserve the Union. Jackson was born in 1767 somewhere near the border between North and South Carolina, into a recently immigrated Scots-Irish farming family. During the American Revolutionary War, Jackson acted as a courier, at age 13, he was captured and mistreated by the British. He moved to Tennessee and practiced as a lawyer, in 1791, he married Rachel Donelson Robards. The couple later learned that Rachels previous husband had failed to finalize their divorce, Jackson served briefly in the U. S. House of Representatives and the U. S. Senate. Upon returning to Tennessee, he was appointed a judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court, in 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia, and was elected its commander the following year. He built the Hermitage plantation in 1804, in 1806, he killed a man in a duel over a matter of honor regarding his wife. He led Tennessee militia and U. S. Army regulars during the Creek War of 1813-1814, Jackson won a decisive victory in the War of 1812 over the British army at the Battle of New Orleans, making him into a national hero. Because Spanish Florida was a refuge for blacks escaping slavery, who allied with the Seminole Indians, Jackson invaded the territory in 1816 to destroy the Negro Fort. He led an invasion in 1818, as part of the First Seminole War, resulting in the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819. Jackson briefly served as Floridas first Territorial Governor in 1821, Jackson was nominated by several state legislatures to be a candidate for president in 1824. Although he earned a plurality in both the electoral and popular vote against three major candidates, Jackson failed to get a majority and lost in the House of Representatives to John Quincy Adams, Jacksons supporters founded what became the Democratic Party. He ran again for president in 1828 against Adams, building and expanding upon his base of support in the West and South, he won in a landslide. He blamed the death of his wife, Rachel, which occurred after the election, on the Adams campaigners, as president, Jackson faced a threat of secession by South Carolina over the Tariff of Abominations, which Congress had enacted under Adams. In contrast to several of his successors, he denied the right of a state to secede from the union or to nullify federal law. The Nullification Crisis was defused when the tariff was amended and Jackson threatened the use of force if South Carolina attempted to secede. Jackson believed strongly in majority rule and he supported direct election of senators and abolition of the Electoral College, believing that these reforms would provide average citizens with greater power

List of United States Post Offices
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Post Offices include individual buildings, whether still in service or not, which have architectural or community-related significance. Many of these are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and/or state, United States Post Office United States Post Office Old Athens, Alabama Main Post Office in Athens, Alabama United States Post Offi

1.
Beaux Arts -style United States Post Office Building (Selma, Alabama), in 2010

3.
Old Post Office Building and Customhouse (Little Rock, Arkansas), in 1973

4.
Old Post Office, Santa Rosa, CA, now Sonoma County Museum

United States Power Squadrons
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The USPS comprises approximately 45,000 members organized into 450 squadrons across the United States and in some US territories. It is the largest U. S. non-profit boating organization and has been honored by three U. S. presidents for its civic contributions and its official publication is The Ensign magazine. There are many opportunities availab

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USPS Ensign (Flag)

Washington, D.C.
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Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D. C. is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16,1790, Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any

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Clockwise from top left: Smithsonian Institution Building, Rock Creek Park, National Mall (including the Lincoln Memorial in the foreground), Howard Theatre and the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

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Map of the District of Columbia in 1835, prior to the retrocession

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Ford's Theatre in the 19th century, site of the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln

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Crowds surrounding the Reflecting Pool during the 1963 March on Washington

United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean,

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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764

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Flag

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The signing of the Mayflower Compact, 1620.

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The Declaration of Independence: the Committee of Five presenting their draft to the Second Continental Congress in 1776

L'Enfant Plaza
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LEnfant Plaza is a complex of four commercial buildings grouped around a large plaza in the Southwest section of Washington, D. C. Immediately below the plaza and the buildings is the La Promenade shopping mall, the plaza is located south of Independence Avenue SW between 12th and 9th Streets SW. It was built perpendicular to LEnfant Promenade, a n

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2011 photograph looking east across L'Enfant Plaza (2011) towards the east building, with the south building at the right. The glass pyramid has since been removed.

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Looking over the Southwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., in July 1939 at the U.S. Capitol building.

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William Zeckendorf in 1952.

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I.M. Pei, the architect who designed the master plan and overall look of L'Enfant Plaza.

Megan Brennan
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Megan Jane Brennan is the Postmaster General of the United States. The seventy-fourth postmaster general, Brennan became the first woman to hold the office when she assumed the position on February 1,2015. A native of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Brennan attended Nativity BVM High School there, after graduating in 1980, she attended Immaculata College

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Megan Brennan

United States Postmaster General
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The Postmaster General of the United States is the chief executive officer of the United States Postal Service. The office, in one form or another, is older than both the United States Constitution and the United States Declaration of Independence, benjamin Franklin was appointed by the Continental Congress as the first Postmaster General in 1775,

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Samuel Osgood (1747–1813)

United States Constitution
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The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. The Constitution, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government, Articles Four, Five and Six entrench concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments and of the states in relationship to the

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Page one of the original copy of the Constitution

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Signing the Constitution, September 17, 1787

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Territorial extent of the United States, 1790.

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"We the People" in an original edition

Federal government of the United States
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The Federal Government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a republic in North America, composed of 50 states, one district, Washington, D. C. and several territories. The federal government is composed of three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U. S. Constitution in the

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The United States Capitol is the seat of government for Congress.

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Great Seal of the United States

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Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union, 1862.

Mail
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The mail or post is a system for physically transporting documents and other small packages, or, the postcards, letters, and parcels themselves. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems, since the mid-19th century national postal systems have generally been established as government mo

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Postal wagons at the postal sorting facility in Sion, Switzerland. Mail between regional cities is transported by rail, to be delivered by postal bus, vans and cycles at a local level.

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Many early post systems consisted of fixed courier routes. Here, a post house on a postal route in the 19th century Finland

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The use of the Scinde Dawk adhesive stamps to signify the prepayment of postage began on 1 July 1852 in the Scinde / Sindh district, as part of a comprehensive reform of the district's postal system.

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Early stamps of India were watermarked with an elephant's head.

Insular area
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An insular area is a territory of the United States of America that is neither a part of one of the fifty U. S. states nor the U. S. federal district of Washington, D. C. The term insular possession is sometimes used. The people of American Samoa are U. S. nationals by place of birth, or they are U. S. citizens by parentage, or naturalization after

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Locations of the insular areas of the United States

Second Continental Congress
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The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the spring of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met between September 5,1774 and October 26,1774, also in Philadelphia, the second Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved

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Thirteen Colonies United States

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The Assembly Room in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Benjamin Franklin
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Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a polymath and a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman. As a scientist, he was a figure in the American Enlightenment. As an inventor, he is known for the rod, bifocals. He fac

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Benjamin Franklin

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Franklin's birthplace on Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts

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Benjamin Franklin (center) at work on a printing press. Reproduction of a Charles Mills painting by the Detroit Publishing Company.

United States Post Office Department
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The Post Office Department was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the Postmaster General, the Postal Service Act signed by President George Washington on February 20,1792, established the Department. Postmaster General John McLean, in office from 18

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United States Post Office Department

Cabinet of the United States
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The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the government serving under the President. Aside from the Attorney General, the heads of the executive departments all receive the title of Secretary, all members of the Cabinet serve at the pleasure of the President, who can dismiss them

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James K. Polk and his Cabinet in 1846. The first Cabinet to be photographed.

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Abraham Lincoln met with his Cabinet for the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation draft, (July 26, 1862).

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The Nixon Cabinet, 1969

Vehicle fleet
–
This page refers to a collection of vehicles with a single owner. For other uses of the fleet, see Fleet. Fleet vehicles are groups of vehicles owned or leased by a business. Typical examples are operated by car rental companies, taxicab companies, public utilities, public bus companies. In addition, many businesses purchase or lease fleet vehicles

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A delivery truck that is part of the United Parcel Service fleet

Letter box
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A letter box, letterbox, letter plate, letter hole, mail slot or mailbox is a receptacle for receiving incoming mail at a private residence or business. For the opposite purpose of collecting outgoing mail, a post box is used instead. This style is almost universal in British homes and offices, most are covered by a flap or seal on the outside for

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A mail slot letterbox, located in the middle of the door.

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A cast-iron mail slot letter box

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An attached or wall-mount letterbox.

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Community letter box station in France

Package delivery
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Package delivery or parcel delivery is the delivery of shipping containers, parcels, or high value mail as single shipments. The service is provided by most postal systems, express mail, private delivery services. In 1852 Wells Fargo, then just one of such services, was formed to provide both banking and express services. These went hand-in-hand, a

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Package delivery truck in Hong Kong

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United Parcel Service boat in Venice, Italy

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Transport packaging needs to be matched to its logistics system. Packages designed for controlled shipments of uniform pallet loads may not be suited to mixed shipments with express carriers.

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Regulations

United Parcel Service
–
United Parcel Service, Inc. is the worlds largest package delivery company and a provider of supply chain management solutions. The global logistics company is headquartered in the city of Sandy Springs, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages per day to more than 7.9 million customers in more than 220 countries and terri

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UPS boat on Canal Grande, Venice, Italy

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1969 Checker Marathon from UPS Canada

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UPS has service worldwide, including Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport (pictured above).

FedEx
–
FedEx Corporation is an American multinational courier delivery services company headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The name FedEx is an abbreviation of the name of the companys original air division, Federal Express. FedEx Corporation is a company, incorporated October 2,1997. FDX Corporation was founded in January 1998 with the acquisition of C

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A FedEx MD-11 on approach to JFK Airport in New York City.

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FedEx Corporation

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Fedex's first van displayed at the FedEx World Headquarters

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FedEx Airbus A300-600F Cargo Jetliner

Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act
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The United States Postal Regulatory Commission, formerly called the Postal Rate Commission, is an independent regulatory agency created by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. Like the Postal Service, it was defined in law as an independent establishment of the executive branch, the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 created the PRC—originally nam

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United States Postal Regulatory Commission

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President Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 into law following the U.S. postal strike of 1970.

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President George W. Bush signed the PAEA into law in December of 2006, giving the PRC its current form.

U.S. Post Office Department
–
The Post Office Department was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the Postmaster General, the Postal Service Act signed by President George Washington on February 20,1792, established the Department. Postmaster General John McLean, in office from 18

1.
United States Post Office Department

Thirteen Colonies
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The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the east coast of North America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries that declared independence in 1776 and formed the United States. The Thirteen Colonies had very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems and they were part of Britains possessions in the New World, which also

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Join, or Die by Benjamin Franklin was recycled to encourage the former colonies to unite against British rule.

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Map of the thirteen original colonies as published for the US Centennial in 1876

Boston
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Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston is also the seat of Suffolk County, although the county government was disbanded on July 1,1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles with a population of 667,137 in 2015, making it the largest city in New England. Alternately, as a Comb

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From top to bottom, left to right: the Boston skyline viewed from the Bunker Hill Monument; the Museum of Fine Arts; Faneuil Hall; Massachusetts State House; The First Church of Christ, Scientist; Boston Public Library; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; South Station; Boston University and the Charles River; Arnold Arboretum; Fenway Park; and the Boston Common

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State Street, 1801

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View of Boston from Dorchester Heights, 1841

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Scollay Square in the 1880s

New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for int

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Clockwise, from top: Midtown Manhattan, Times Square, the Unisphere in Queens, the Brooklyn Bridge, Lower Manhattan with One World Trade Center, Central Park, the headquarters of the United Nations, and the Statue of Liberty

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New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it "New York".

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The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolution, took place in Brooklyn in 1776.

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Broadway follows the Native American Wickquasgeck Trail through Manhattan.

Letters patent
–
Letters patent can be used for the creation of corporations or government offices, or for the granting of city status or a coat of arms. Letters patent are issued for the appointment of representatives of the Crown, such as governors and governors-general of Commonwealth realms, in the United Kingdom they are also issued for the creation of peers o

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Letters patent issued by Queen Victoria in 1900, creating the office of Governor-General of Australia as part of the process of Federation

2.
Letters patent issued by the United States General Land Office

William III of England
–
It is a coincidence that his regnal number was the same for both Orange and England. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II and he is informally known by sections of the population in Northern Ireland and Scotland as King Billy. William inherited the principality of Orange from his father, William II and his mother Mary, Princess Royal, was

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William III by Sir Godfrey Kneller

2.
William's parents, William II of Orange and Mary Stuart, Princess Royal

3.
The young prince portrayed in a flower garland painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem filled with symbols of the House of Orange

4.
Johan de Witt took over William's education in 1666.

Mary II of England
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Mary II was joint monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland with her husband and first cousin, William of Orange, from 1689 until her death. William became sole ruler upon her death in 1694, popular histories usually refer to their joint reign as that of William and Mary. Mary wielded less power than William when he was in England, ceding most of h

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Portrait by Godfrey Kneller, 1690

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The Lady Mary by Caspar Netscher, 1676, the year before her marriage

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Portrait by Peter Lely, 1677

4.
Mary's father, James II and VII, was the last Catholic monarch in the British Isles (portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c 1686)

Massachusetts
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It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York to the west. The state is named for the Massachusett tribe, which inhabited the area. The capital of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England is Boston, over 80% of Massachuse

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A portion of the north-central Pioneer Valley in Sunderland

2.
Flag

3.
Many coastal areas in Massachusetts provide breeding areas for species such as the piping plover

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The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall (1882). The Pilgrims were a group of Puritans who founded Plymouth in 1620.

Post office
–
A post office is a customer service facility forming part of a national postal system. Post offices offer mail-related services such as acceptance of letters and parcels, provision of post office boxes, and sale of stamps, packaging. In addition, many post offices offer services, providing and accepting government forms, processing government servi

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The General Post Office Building in Shanghai, China.

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The old General Post Office on Lombard Street, London, in 1803

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A Canadian sorting office in 2006

4.
Indian Post Office at the Mango Orange village, Ooty Road

Post road
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A post road is a road designated for the transportation of postal mail. In various centuries and countries, post road became more or less equivalent to main road, royal road, the 20th century spread of postal service blurred the distinction. In what was to become the United States, post roads developed as the primary method of communicating informa

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Old Albany Post Road in Philipstown, New York, a section that remains unpaved and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places

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18th century milestone on the Boston Post Road

Rufus Easton
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Rufus Easton was an American attorney, politician, and postmaster. He served as a delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the Missouri Territory prior to statehood. After statehood he became Missouris second Attorney General, Rufus Easton was the founder of Alton, Illinois, and father of womens education pioneer Mary Easton Sibl

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Rufus Easton

Thomas Jefferson
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Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Previously, he was elected the second Vice President of the United States, Jefferson was primarily of English ancestry, born and educated in colonial Virgini

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Thomas Jefferson

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Wren Building (rear), College of William & Mary where Jefferson studied

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House of Burgesses in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Jefferson served 1769–1775

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Jefferson's home, Monticello

Gideon Granger
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Gideon Granger was an early American politician and lawyer. He was the father of Francis Granger, born in Suffield, Connecticut, Granger attended and graduated from Yale University and became a lawyer. He was considered a brilliant political essayist, using the pseudonyms Algernon Sydney and Epaminondas many of his writings, defending Jeffersonian

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Gideon Granger

Louisiana Territory
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Louisiana Territory was formed out of the Indiana Territory-administered District of Louisiana, which consisted of all Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 33rd parallel. The 33rd parallel now forms the border of Arkansas and the northern border of Louisiana. This act, which went into effect on October 1,1804, expanded the authority of the governo

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Flag of the United States

Aaron Burr
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Aaron Burr Jr. was an American politician. He was the vice president of the United States, serving during President Thomas Jeffersons first term. Burr served as a Continental Army officer in the Revolutionary War, after which he became a successful lawyer, the highlight of Burrs tenure as president of the senate was the Senates first impeachment tr

Alexander Hamilton
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Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration. He took the lead in the funding of the debts by the Federal government, as well as the establishment of a national bank,

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Alexander Hamilton

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The Hamilton House, Charlestown, Nevis. The current structure was rebuilt from the ruins of the house where Alexander Hamilton was born and lived as a young child.

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Hamilton in his youth

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Statue of Hamilton outside Hamilton Hall overlooking Hamilton Lawn at his alma mater, Columbia University in New York City

Spoke-hub distribution paradigm
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The spoke-hub distribution paradigm is a system of connections arranged like a wire wheel in which all traffic moves along spokes connected to the hub at the center. The model is used in industry, particularly in transport, telecommunications, freight. The hub-and-spoke model is most frequently compared to the point-to-point transit model, for a ne

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Hub and spoke airline route structures. Los Angeles and Denver are used as hubs.

Railway Post Office
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The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the train. In the UK, the equivalent term was Travelling Post Office, from the middle of the 19th century, many American railroads earned substantial revenues through contracts with the U. S. Post Office Department to carry mail aboard

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Demo of the mail hook pulling a mail bag on Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad #1923 at the Illinois Railway Museum.

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The first RPO (1862)

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An interior view of Great Northern Railway #42, a restored RPO on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

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A working RPO on the Chicago and North Western in 1965.

American frontier
–
Frontier refers to a contrasting region at the edge of a European-American line of settlement. American historians cover multiple frontiers but the folklore is focused primarily on the 19th century west of the Mississippi River. As defined by Hine and Faragher, frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of

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The cowboy, the quintessential symbol of the American frontier, circa 1887

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Daniel Boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap

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Indian leader Tecumseh killed in battle in 1813 by Richard M. Johnson, who later became Vice president

4.
Jefferson saw himself as a man of the frontier and a scientist; he was keenly interested in expanding and exploring the West

Andrew Jackson
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Andrew Jackson was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 and was the founder of the Democratic Party. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson served in Congress, as president, Jackson sought to advance the rights of the common man against what he saw as a corrupt aristoc

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Daguerreotype of Andrew Jackson

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Treaty of Fort Jackson, 1814 Jackson imposed severe terms on the Creek Indians under the Treaty with the Creeks (1847)

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The Battle of New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson stands on the parapet of his makeshift defenses as his troops repulse attacking Highlanders, painted by Edward Percy Moran in 1910.

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Trial of Robert Ambrister during the Seminole War. Ambrister was one of two British subjects executed by General Jackson. (1848)

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Cover flown on the first day of scheduled Air Mail Service in the U.S. and franked with the first U.S. Air Mail stamp, the 24 Cent "Jenny" (C-3). Cancel: "AIR MAIL SERVICE - WASH. N.Y. PHILA." "MAY 15, 1918 - FIRST TRIP" "PHILA." (Type: USPOD CDS w/killer bars)

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Wise ascends on the first United States balloon airmail from Lafayette, Indiana, in 1859.

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The first U.S. Air Mail takes off from Washington, DC on May 15, 1918.

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Maj. Ruben Fleet by Lt. Boyle's Jenny before the take off from Washington, D.C. for Philadelphia on May 15, 1918.

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A sign on Australia 's Great Ocean Road reminding foreign motorists to keep left. Such signs are placed at the exit of parking areas associated with scenic views, where other road traffic may at times be sparse.

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Right-hand traffic

3.
One of many road signs in the British county of Kent placed on the right-hand side of the road.

4.
The change of traffic directions at the Laos–Thai border takes place on Lao territory just off the Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge.

3.
The 1,400 square feet (130 m 2) plot pictured here has the graves of nineteen members of the Hillendahl family, including one who was interred in 1854. A descendant of the family sold all of the land around the grave site, but refused to move the actual graves.

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The intersection of Blalock and Westview, with Spring Branch street signs

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Storming of Redoubt #10 in the Siege of Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War prompted the British government to begin negotiations, resulting in the Treaty of Paris and British recognition of the United States of America.

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Emblem of the United States Department of the Army

3.
General Andrew Jackson stands on the parapet of his makeshift defenses as his troops repulse attacking Highlanders during the defense of New Orleans, the final major battle of the War of 1812

4.
The Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the American Civil War

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A sample Medicare card. There are separate lines for basic Part A and Part B's supplementary medical coverage, each with its own date. There are no lines for Part C or D, which are additional supplemental policies for which a separate card is issued.

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President Johnson signing the Medicare amendment. Former President Harry S. Truman (seated) and his wife, Bess, are on the far right